Happy Bitcoin MMO Day to those who celebrate

Bitcoin hit this little-known milestone days before Pizza Day

article-image

A Tale in the Desert and Ana Lo/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks

share

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


Bitcoin Pizza Day is meant to celebrate the first-ever bitcoin payment for a physical good: Papa John’s pizza in 2010.

But here’s a palate cleanser: Three days earlier, the founder of early MMORPG A Tale in the Desert adopted bitcoin for monthly subscriptions, apparently becoming the first commercial video game to do so.

On This Day

We’re cheating a little bit: Bitcoin MMO Day was actually yesterday, on May 19.

At least, that was when Andrew “teppy” Tepper first announced he had opened his Ancient Egypt-themed online roleplaying game to bitcoin.

“I run the MMO A Tale in the Desert. We charge $13.95/month for the game, and pay about $0.74 in merchant and gateway fees,” teppy wrote on Bitcointalk.

“We’ll now accept Bitcoins as an alternate payment method. The price per month is 2,000 BTC, which according to the exchange is a discount right now.” 

He was right: Bitcoins traded for less than half a cent at the time, pricing one month worth of game time at only $9.20 if paid in BTC — a 33% discount.

A screenshot from A Tale in the Desert circa 2010 shows a new frontier, just as Bitcoin was.

Tepper had initially hoped to match in-game usernames with messages attached to each bitcoin transaction. Laszlo Hayncez, the Bitcoin Pizza Guy, quickly pointed out that messages could only be included when sending coins to IP addresses, a feature that was eventually removed in 2012 due to security concerns.

“Hmm – is there any text field associated with an address based transaction? It does make accepting Bitcoins a bit more cumbersome. Would including such a text field as part of the protocol compromise anonymity somehow?” Tepper replied.

Tepper’s quest spawned a discussion about encrypted messaging via transaction outputs that roped in Satoshi himself: “Bitcoin uses EC-DSA, which can only do digital signing, not encryption. RSA can do both, but I didn’t use it because it’s an order of magnitude bigger and would have been impractical.”

Laszlo continued to help Tepper in engineering a secure solution to accept bitcoins, one that would generate a new bitcoin address for receiving each separate payment.

It’s unclear whether such a system was ever implemented, but the address Tepper originally supplied for subscriptions received an eye-watering 42,100 BTC across 27 separate transactions in two months, worth around $3,600 back then but $4.4 billion today.

Tepper went on to launch another MMORPG, Dragon’s Tale, three years later, based entirely around online gambling. 

Y’all got any more of those soldier statues?

Of course, Dragon’s Tale accepted bitcoins (and credit cards), and even featured faucet-like mini-games that gave out free BTC as late as 2016, when coins were trading at nearly $600 apiece.

We’ve got a line out to Tepper to see if he’s up for a chat, but in the meantime…

Happy Bitcoin MMO Day!


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

recent research

Research Report Templates (3).png

Research

Pear Protocol has proven its market fit through its pair-trading infrastructure, sustaining consistent trading activity despite recent headwinds. Its strategic pivot toward Hyperliquid integration represents a major growth catalyst amid industry consolidation. While short-term token unlocks present challenges, current valuations and liquidity conditions may offer compelling opportunities for investors.

article-image

Paradigm’s Alexander Grieve and Jito Labs CLO Rebecca Rettig broke down the GENIUS bill on the Empire podcast

article-image

The new system is “basically decentralizing ourselves,” Jito Labs CEO Lucas Bruder said

article-image

Markets are all-in on optimism — is that a forecast or a delusion?

article-image

The all-cash deal will push Sanctum beyond liquid staking tokens

article-image

The stablecoin-focused bill is set to have a profound effect on dollar dominance and the demand for US debt, a senior Treasury official says

article-image

PUMP’s numbers on Solana indicate a “fork in the road” when it comes to the role of DEXs in token sales, says Blockworks Research