The $700 Million Pizza: The True Story Behind Bitcoin Pizza Day

On May 18, 2010, a Florida software developer named Laszlo Hanyecz logged onto the Bitcointalk forum and published an unusual trade proposal. The thread was titled simply: "Pizza for bitcoins?"

"I'll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day," Laszlo wrote. "I like having left over pizza to nibble on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I'm aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don't have to order or prepare it myself, kind of like ordering a 'breakfast platter' at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you are happy!"

He added his preferred toppings: "I like things like onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, pepperoni, etc.. just standard stuff no weird fish topping or anything like that."

At the time, Bitcoin had no official market price, no regulated exchanges, and no mainstream press coverage. Early cypherpunks and programmers traded coins casually on IRC channels for fractions of a single cent — roughly $0.003 to $0.004 per BTC. The total nominal value of 10,000 BTC was approximately $41.

For four days, nobody took the offer. Other forum members chimed in, asking if Laszlo was getting hungry or whether he was worried about Bitcoin's lack of liquidity.

Finally, on Saturday, May 22, 2010, a 19-year-old student in California named Jeremy Sturdivant (known online as "jercos") accepted the deal. Sturdivant called a local Papa John's in Jacksonville, Florida, paid about $41 on his credit card for two large pies, and had them delivered directly to Laszlo's door. Laszlo promptly transferred 10,000 BTC across the network.

To celebrate, Laszlo uploaded photos of his two young children eagerly reaching for slices of pepperoni pizza next to open cardboard boxes. History had been made: for the first time in human history, digital cryptocurrency had purchased a physical real-world good.

Today, 10,000 Bitcoins is an unfathomable fortune. How did an ordinary developer have so much to spend on lunch?

Laszlo was not just an early user; he was a pioneer. In early 2010, Bitcoin mining was done almost exclusively using standard computer CPUs, yielding only a modest trickle of coins. Laszlo, an experienced graphics programmer, wrote the very first GPU-based Bitcoin mining algorithm for Mac OS X.

By harnessing the parallel processing power of graphics cards, his mining rig was dozens of times faster than CPU miners. He was easily generating thousands of Bitcoins per day right from his living room computer.

When Laszlo shared his GPU mining code with Satoshi Nakamoto, Satoshi famously asked him to keep it relatively low-key, worrying that GPU mining would push out ordinary CPU miners before Bitcoin could grow a broad decentralized user base.

What seemed like a fair swap for $41 worth of dinner quickly turned into a compounding legend as Bitcoin grew:

Nine months later, in February 2011, Bitcoin reached parity with the US dollar ($1.00). The two pizzas were now worth $10,000.

By late 2013, as Bitcoin crossed $1,000, the pizzas were worth $10,000,000.

During the 2017 bull run, at $20,000 per BTC, the pizzas were worth $200,000,000.

In the 2024–2026 cycle, with Bitcoin trading between $70,000 and $100,000+, those two Papa John's pizzas became worth an astonishing $700 Million to $1 Billion — making them the most expensive meal in the history of the world.

Over the past fifteen years, journalists and podcasters have repeatedly asked Laszlo Hanyecz if he stays awake at night regretting the purchase.

His answer has remained remarkably grounded and consistent: "No, I don't regret it. Someone had to start it. Back then, nobody knew if Bitcoin would succeed. If no one had ever spent it on anything real, Bitcoin might just have remained an obscure computer science project. The transaction gave Bitcoin real-world utility."

Laszlo went on to make several more pizza trades that summer, reportedly spending over 30,000 BTC on food before retiring his mining rig when difficulty rose.

Today, May 22nd is globally celebrated across the cryptocurrency industry as "Bitcoin Pizza Day." Crypto meetups from Seoul to Buenos Aires, London to Tokyo, gather to order pizza, donate to charity, and reflect on how far decentralized money has traveled.

The story of the 10,000 Bitcoin pizza is not a cautionary tale of regret. It is a tribute to the pioneer spirit — a reminder that before an asset can become a global store of value, someone has to be brave enough to take the first step and buy two pizzas.