Laszlo Hanyecz’s 2010 Pizza: 10,000 BTC Now $770M

On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz completed a transaction in which he transferred 10,000 BTC in exchange for two Papa John’s pizzas. The trade was posted and recorded on an online bitcoin forum and is remembered as one of the first documented commercial purchases made with bitcoin. Enthusiasts mark the anniversary each year as Bitcoin Pizza Day.

Hanyecz first posted the offer on May 18, 2010, requesting that someone arrange delivery in return for bitcoin. In the original forum post he wrote, “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.” On May 22 another forum user, Jeremy Sturdivant, fulfilled the request and completed the exchange.

At the time those 10,000 BTC were worth roughly $41. With bitcoin trading at much higher levels years later, the same quantity of coins is now valued at more than $770 million. The gap between the 2010 and current values reflects long-term price appreciation in the bitcoin market.

Hanyecz later reported that he spent more than 100,000 BTC on pizza during 2010. He stopped offering pizza-for-bitcoin on public forums on August 4, 2010, explaining that he could not continue because he was no longer generating thousands of coins per day and could not afford to keep trading large sums: “Thanks to everyone who bought me pizza already but I’m kind of holding off on doing any more of these for now.”

Hanyecz was an early participant in bitcoin development and mining discussions. He contributed to work on GPU-based mining and helped produce an early Bitcoin Core release for Mac users. Reflecting on the purchases, he wrote that he did not regret the transactions, calling them a hobby contribution that resulted in a meal: “I got pizza for contributing to an open-source project. Usually, hobbies are a time sink and money sink, and in this case, my hobby bought me dinner.”

In later posts he reiterated that he would accept bitcoin for pizza while he had the funds and at times offered to trade 10,000 BTC for pizzas. The 2010 exchange continues to be cited as an early example of bitcoin being used in ordinary commerce and as a reference point in the history of the cryptocurrency.