anyone else notice pizza day has quietly turned into a TradFi event this year?

so it's almost may 22 and i was expecting the usual laszlo hanyecz meme cycle. 10,000 btc for two pizzas, jpegs of the original forum post, the "he could've been a billionaire" comments, etc.

but the campaigns dropping this year are different. instead of "trade btc to celebrate pizza day," half of them are pushing gold, oil, indices, individual stocks. like the entire framing flipped — pizza day used to celebrate crypto buying real-world stuff, and now exchanges are celebrating it by letting you trade real-world stuff on crypto venues.

honestly kind of fits. laszlo's transaction was the first time digital money met the physical economy. tradfi pairs on a crypto exchange are the same merge running in reverse.

the one i'm actually trading is phemex's $200k tradfi pizza day festival. not because of the prize pool specifically — that's just a tailwind on activity i was already going to do — but because the structure is actually well-designed:

https://preview.redd.it/v9oj6vywg92h1.jpg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab8157349eb75ef6242e6af4987e08c38d2f0776

• top 1,500 traders get paid out of a $50k pool. most comps stop at top 100, so the leaderboard stays competitive deep into the event
• first trade is downside-protected, which is the right onboarding mechanic for people who've never touched a gold or oil pair before
• $150k basic tasks pool is broad enough that smaller accounts realistically eat something
• runs may 19 to june 1 utc, two weeks, eligible pairs are gold/oil/indices/stocks

am i trading it because of the festival? no. am i trading the festival because i was already going to trade gold this cycle? yeah, basically.

the meta-question i'm more interested in: is this the year pizza day permanently becomes a tradfi holiday instead of a btc-only one? feels like the cultural center of gravity is shifting. would be curious if anyone else is noticing the same shift in their feeds.

also genuinely curious — for anyone trading the festival, which pair are you leaning into? personally i'm 60/40 gold/crude on the macro setup but happy to be told i'm wrong.

NFA obviously. trading my own book. eat your pizza.