Bitcoin Pizza Day 2022 - An Early BTC Adopter Paid 10,000 BTC for a Pair of Pizzas, Here’s How Much It’s Worth Now

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Bitcoin Pizza Day 2022 - An Early BTC Adopter Paid 10,000 BTC for a Pair of Pizzas, Here’s How Much It’s Worth Now

Key highlights:

  • In the crypto community, May 22 is known as Bitcoin Pizza Day
  • On May 22, 2010, a bitcointalk.org user bought 2 pizzas for 10,000 BTC
  • This was the first recorded purchase where Bitcoin was exchanged for a real-world product
  • 10,000 BTC is now worth upwards of $290 million
  • The buyer of the two pizzas was Laszlo Hanyecz, who was an early Bitcoin adopter and coin contributor

10,000 BTC for a pizza

May 22 is known as the Bitcoin Pizza Day in the Bitcoin community, as Bitcoin fans celebrate what is perhaps the single most famous BTC transaction in the cryptocurrency’s 10-year history. It was also the first recorded exchange of Bitcoin for a real-world product or service. The Bitcoin pizza story is the perfect representation of Bitcoin’s ascension from an obscure software project to an asset class that’s worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

First, let’s take a step back in time to get a better context of the state of Bitcoin at the time of the transaction, which took place on May 22, 2010. Bitcoin’s genesis block was mined on January 3, 2009. 

At the time, the Bitcoin community still mostly consisted of a niche group of enthusiasts. The main hub for Bitcoin discussion back then was the bitcointalk.org forum, which is still in operation today. 

The “Bitcoin pizza guy” was Laszlo Hanyecz, an early adopter and code contributor known on the forum by the username “laszlo”. He posted a thread offering to pay 10,000 BTC to anyone who would deliver him two pizzas.

Initially, the response from the community was lukewarm. 3 days later, laszlo wrote: “So nobody wants to buy me pizza? Is the bitcoin amount I'm offering too low?”. 

Shortly after, a user called “jercos” stepped up to the plate and delivered two pizzas to Laszlo Hanyecz in exchange for 10,000 BTC.

Bitcoin Pizza Day

The infamous Bitcoin pizzas. Image source: Laszlo Hanyecz

Hanyecz seems to have enjoyed the pizzas, as he proceeded to extend the same offer to anyone who would take it up. He noted that 10,000 for BTC for 2 pizzas was a favorable exchange for the pizza side of the trade, as two pizzas would likely only cost between $25 and $30. Meanwhile, the general consensus at the time was that 10,000 BTC was worth about $40.

It didn't take long for the price of Bitcoin to skyrocket

While it’s not really possible to get an accurate measure of how much Bitcoin was worth at the time, estimates say that BTC was worth less than $0.01 each at the time of the Bitcoin for pizza transaction. There wasn’t a liquid market for Bitcoin at the time, so BTC didn’t really have an established price.

By August 2010, the Bitcoin price had already surged considerably, and user “Knightmb” remarked that the 10,000 BTC was already worth $600 at the time. Hanyecz decided it was time to take the offer off the table: 

“Well I didn't expect this to be so popular but I can't really afford to keep doing it since I can't generate thousands of coins a day anymore :). Thanks to everyone who bought me pizza already but I'm kind of holding off on doing any more of these for now.”

Hindsight is always 20/20

At today’s prices, 10,000 BTC will set you back more than $290 million.

While nobody would blame him for being bitter about spending BTC for various goods and services in the early days instead of “HODLing”, Hanyecz actually seems to be a good sport about the whole situation. Hanyecz explained his perspective in an interview with CoinTelegraph:

“You know, I don't regret it. I think that it's great that I got to be part of the early history of Bitcoin in that way, and people know about the pizza and it's an interesting story because everybody can kind of relate to that and be [like] - "Oh my God, you spent all of that money!" I was also kind of giving people tech support on the forums and I ported Bitcoin to MacOS, and you know, some other things - fix bugs and whatnot, and I've always kind of just wanted people to use Bitcoin and buying the pizza was one way to do that.”

Laszlo Hanyecz was also featured on a “60 Minutes” episode featuring the Bitcoin phenomenon.

Peter has been covering the cryptocurrency and blockchain space since 2017, when he first discovered Bitcoin and Ethereum. Peter's main crypto interests are censorship-resistance, privacy and zero-knowledge tech, although he covers a broad range of crypto-related topics. He is also interested in NFTs as a unique digital medium, especially in the context of generative art.

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