The man who bought pizza for 10,000 Bitcoins, Laszlo: Never regretted it, felt like he won the internet that day.

The 15th Pizza Day, Bitcoin breaks historical high.

Written by: Hill Far

Editor: Flumen, Centreless

This article was published in March 2025

The pizza purchased at that time

On May 18, 2010, at 12:35, a user with the ID Laszlo posted a bounty on the Bitcoin forum, willing to exchange 10,000 Bitcoins for two large pizzas. The seller could make them himself or order takeout; in the post, he also detailed his taste preferences. Previously, on April 16, he had joined the forum Bitcoin Talk Forum initiated by Bitcoin's founder Satoshi Nakamoto.

In 2010, Bitcoin had just appeared, and people were still relatively unfamiliar with the so-called "digital cryptocurrency" that existed on the network, let alone the concept of transactions. Therefore, the post did not cause much reaction immediately after it was published, and only a few users expressed their willingness to buy him pizza, but the transaction could not be made because the person was not in the United States.

At that time, 10,000 Bitcoins were worth about 30 dollars, which made Laszlo doubt whether he had offered too low a price. It wasn't until four days later, on May 22, that Laszlo replied on the forum stating that he had successfully bought the pizza and shared a photo of the pizza he bought. May 22 thus became known as "Bitcoin Pizza Day."

The historical significance of this transaction is that it is the first transaction since the birth of Bitcoin, indicating that Bitcoin has now acquired the function of currency transactions, rather than just being stored on the network. Of course, this first offline transaction of Bitcoin also carries some experimental nature, testing whether Bitcoin truly has the practical utility of "currency".

According to an interview with Laszlo by Bitcoin Magazine in 2019, when asked why he did this, Laszlo said, "I wanted to buy pizza with Bitcoin because for me it was free pizza. I mean, I wrote this thing and mined Bitcoin, and it felt like I won the internet that day — I got pizza by contributing to an open-source project. Usually, hobbies cost time and money, but in this case, my hobby bought me dinner."

Laszlo

The "experiment" conducted by Laszlo was also related to the ease of mining blocks at that time. As a programmer, he was among the earliest group of people to come into contact with Bitcoin, and he was also one of the first to discover the stalling in mining coins. It is said that he quickly mined tens of thousands of Bitcoins.

According to the Blockchain explorer OXT charting tool, Laszlo's wallet saw more funds inflow starting from May 2010, with a peak balance of 20,962 BTC that month. It can be seen that the 10,000 Bitcoins spent on that pizza were quickly replenished through mining (his wallet reached a historical high of 43,854 BTC in June 2010, after which BTC slowly flowed out, although he may have more than one wallet).

After the incident of Bitcoin trading for pizza, as the price of Bitcoin continues to rise, some netizens keep updating the latest market prices of these two pizzas in the comments below. Laszlo also commented that he didn't expect Bitcoin to rise so quickly.

Even later, as Bitcoin became more valuable, in response to the pizza transaction incident, Laszlo Hanyecz stated in an interview that he did not feel regret for this expenditure, nor did he lose sleep over it. In his words, he was quite happy during that time, after all, he could enjoy free pizza just by using a graphics card.

In fact, after completing the first transaction, Laszlo Hanyecz began to frequently use Bitcoin for payments, spending about 100,000 Bitcoins in total, which is worth over $4 billion now. The pizza that Laszlo bought for about $30 with 10,000 Bitcoins is now worth over $260 million.

Laszlo himself has always been relatively low-key; he hasn't opened his own social media accounts, and it's unknown whether he has become wealthy due to Bitcoin.

However, we can continue to follow the whereabouts of the 10,000 Bitcoins that Laszlo purchased after buying pizza.

The seller who made the deal with Laszlo Hanyecz was a 19-year-old boy from California named Jeremy Sturdivant. He got into Bitcoin in 2009 and mined a few thousand coins himself. Jeremy was actually also an early consumer of Bitcoin, using it for payments online or offline whenever he had the chance. According to him, he spent those ten thousand Bitcoins on traveling with his girlfriend.

In 2018, Jeremy admitted in an interview that he never thought that Bitcoin would have such a large appreciation in the future. Even then he doesn't regret spending those bitcoins, and he feels that the deal of selling pizza has brought him a total of $400 in revenue, which has appreciated tenfold, and the deal is still a good deal.

Later, the price trend of Bitcoin is evident to all. In May 2023, the market and capital still had confidence in Bitcoin and looked forward to the arrival of the next halving period.

Hanyecz has always maintained this positive attitude. This may be because since joining the Bitcoin open source community in 2010, his approach to Bitcoin has not changed. For him, it is still just a hobby rather than a profession.

The low-key Hanyecz has since participated as a Bitcoin enthusiast.

"To be honest, I feel a bit detached because there is too much attention." He said, "I don't want to draw that kind of attention, and of course I don't want people to think I'm Satoshi Nakamoto... I just feel it's better to treat it as a hobby. I have a normal job, and I won't work full-time on Bitcoin. I don't want it to become my responsibility and career. I'm happy to be involved to this extent."

Bitcoin Magazine reported on May 22, 2019, that they were also pleased that Hanyecz could be involved. "After all, he provided us with Bitcoin Core on MacOS and GPU mining - and the pizza meme, which, while it may not be as important or impressive as Hanyecz's other contributions, has made May 22 unforgettable (and delicious) for the community."