sommaire · 7 sections
Sixteen years ago today, a programmer in Florida ordered two pizzas and paid for them with 10,000 bitcoins. At the time, that was worth about 41 dollars for the two. At today’s price (May 2026), those 10,000 BTC are worth roughly 760 million dollars. Every year, May 22 comes back — and every year, the same line goes around on Twitter: “he lost X hundred million dollars in pizzas.”
I find that line intellectually lazy. This article tells what really happened, what Laszlo Hanyecz himself says about it, and what we can seriously take away from it — which isn’t what you hear everywhere.
May 22, 2010 — the story
Four days earlier, on May 18, 2010, on the BitcoinTalk forum, a certain laszlo posted a thread with a blunt title: “Pizza for bitcoins?”. The message was simple: he was offering 10,000 BTC to anyone who’d get two pizzas delivered to his home in Florida. He noted he’d prefer homemade pizzas but a chain order was fine. Tomato, cheese, peppers, sausage, mushrooms — not picky.
For four days, nothing happened. A few mocking or puzzled replies. Then, on May 22, a 19-year-old, Jeremy Sturdivant (username jercos on the forum), accepted the deal. He ordered two pizzas from Papa John’s, paid in dollars, had them delivered to Laszlo in Jacksonville, Florida. Laszlo got his pizzas, took a photo (which would then circulate everywhere), and sent the 10,000 BTC to jercos.
Credit: Laszlo Hanyecz, photo originally published on the BitcoinTalk forum on May 22, 2010.
The two protagonists. Laszlo Hanyecz, a Hungarian-American programmer based in Florida, is one of the first to have adapted Bitcoin mining to a graphics card (GPU) — he’s been accumulating bitcoins by the thousands for months. Jeremy Sturdivant, 19, follows the forum out of curiosity; he’ll sell off part of his 10,000 BTC shortly after, casually. Neither presents himself as a visionary on future value. It’s just a guy who wants to test whether this works, and another who’s having fun playing along.
The transaction, technically
The exchange is recorded in the Bitcoin blockchain, in a block dated May 22, 2010. It is the first documented commercial transaction where bitcoins are used to buy a real good — not BTC traded for dollars, but BTC for pizza.
At the time, the Bitcoin network is a little over a year old (the Genesis block dates from January 2009). The BTC/USD price is extremely low and illiquid: it’s estimated at roughly $0.0041 per bitcoin in May 2010. Clean math: 10,000 BTC × $0.0041 ≈ $41 for both pizzas at the moment of the transaction.
What we don’t know for certain: how much Laszlo was objectively “overpaying” relative to the actual price of Papa John’s pizzas in Jacksonville in 2010, or how much jercos actually shelled out in dollars. The margin between the two is not publicly documented in a verifiable way. All we know is that the deal closed, and both parties walked away happy.
The dizzying figure (and why it doesn’t say much)
Now the number that makes every press headline every May 22. At today’s BTC price (≈ $76,000 at the time of writing), 10,000 BTC are worth ≈ 760 million dollars — for two pizzas. The figure is catchy. It clicks.
Except it doesn’t say much. For two reasons:
It assumes a trajectory nobody had any way to predict in 2010. The Bitcoin project is less than 18 months old at the time, backed by a few dozen people on a forum, with no real liquidity. The probability of it being worth zero at 5 years is, objectively, high. That it later became a global asset class is one scenario among dozens.
It assumes Laszlo could have actually HODL’d. Keeping 10,000 BTC for 16 years means going through: the Mt. Gox bankruptcy (2014), the Bitcoin Cash hard-fork (2017), two bear markets at -80%, FTX (2022), and the temptation every time the price doubles to take a little profit. It’s a psychological obstacle course few people — including the most convinced — have actually held through.
The figure “he lost $760M in pizzas” is a perfect hindsight bias. You take the actual trajectory, compute the final value, announce the “missed gain”. It’s as relevant as telling someone who sold their house in 2010 that they missed 100% capital gain because the real estate market has doubled since. Nobody reasons that way about an apartment. We should stop reasoning that way about Bitcoin.
What Laszlo himself says
The most refreshing element of the story is that Laszlo has no expressed regret. Interview after interview — including a long 60 Minutes segment — he keeps the same line: that was precisely the point.
He didn’t spend 10,000 BTC thinking they would one day be worth hundreds of millions. He spent them thinking it had to be proven that a peer-to-peer digital currency without intermediaries could buy something real. At the time, that proof of concept didn’t exist. Without him, or someone else who would have done the same sooner or later, Bitcoin remained a forum curiosity.
He even repeated the exercise on February 25, 2018, on the Lightning Network, ordering two pizzas again — paid 0.00649 BTC (649,000 satoshis) this time, in a near-instant transaction directly to the restaurant, without a third party. Once again, the gesture is deliberate: demonstrate, not hoard.
That stance deserves respect. It’s coherent, owned, and historically valuable.
Why it isn’t “he lost X billion” — the real lesson
Here’s what really interests me in this story.
A sensible decision in its context can look crazy fifteen years later. That isn’t a judgment error. It’s the normal functioning of a decision under uncertainty.
You make a choice with the information available at the moment you make it. If the information says this asset has a 30% chance of being worth zero in 5 years, and a 70% chance of being worth something between $0 and $100, then spending 10,000 units for a pizza that’s maybe worth $20 is a choice that’s debatable at that moment — not with 2026’s information.
Hindsight bias is the #1 trap in personal finance, in both directions:
- “I should have bought Bitcoin in 2012” — no, at the time it wasn’t a reasonable decision for most profiles. The risk was enormous.
- “I should have sold everything in November 2021” — no, at the time you had no way of knowing it was the peak.
The only actionable thing in this lesson is: write your method when calm-headed, apply it under pressure, and don’t rewrite history after. That’s the whole spirit of Why writing your method changes everything . If Laszlo had written in 2010 “I buy stuff with my BTC to prove this works”, then the pizza transaction is consistent with his method. The 2026 outcome invalidates nothing.
The corresponding takeaway for us in 2026: if you have a BTC position, having a written partial-profit rule — a take-profit — solves 80% of the dilemma. You no longer have to choose between “HODL everything” and “sell everything”, you follow your rule. And on a future May 22, nobody can say you “lost X million” for the simple reason that you applied your method.
Why the community celebrates
Beyond the figure, May 22 has remained in the Bitcoin community’s cultural memory for a simple reason: it’s the first act of real use. The proof by example that a digital asset transferred peer-to-peer, without bank, without intermediary, without permission, could be exchanged for something tangible (a pizza warm in a cardboard box).
“Pizza Day” has become an informal holiday: conferences mention it, charity projects organize BTC donations, some pizzerias accept crypto that day on special terms. It’s less a nostalgic commemoration than a reminder: what was theoretical in 2010 works today at planetary scale, and what feels theoretical in 2026 may be routine in 2040.
Happy Pizza Day
If you want to understand technically what happens when Laszlo pressed Send from his wallet in 2010 — how the ECDSA signature proves he owns his 10,000 BTC, how the network validates the transaction, how it ends up etched in a mined block — that’s the whole point of the Inside the gears of Bitcoin series, and specifically the article The cryptography of Bitcoin .
Happy May 22 to all. And if the urge takes you to order a pizza tonight, do it. Method also means knowing how to enjoy the present moment — not just HODL for an uncertain future.
This article is not investment advice.