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

Original author: Hill Far

Reprint: Oliver, Mars Finance

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 ten thousand bitcoins for two large pizzas. The seller could either make them himself or order takeout, and in the post, he detailed his taste preferences. Prior to this, on April 16, he 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 the time, 10,000 BTC was worth about $30, so it made Laszlo wonder if he was bidding too low. It wasn’t until 4 days later, on May 22, that Laszlo replied on the forum that he had successfully bought the pizza and posted a photo of the pizza he bought. May 22 is also known as “Bticoin 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 transactional function of currency, rather than just being stored on the network. Of course, this first offline transaction of Bitcoin also carries an experimental nature, testing whether Bitcoin actually possesses the practical utility function of “currency.”

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

Laszlo

Laszlo’s “experiment” was also related to the ease of digging blocks at the time. As a programmer, he was both one of the first people to come into contact with bitcoin and the one who issued obvious cards to mine coins, and 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 observed that the 10,000 Bitcoins spent on that pizza were quickly replenished through mining (his wallet reached an all-time high of 43,854 BTC in June 2010, after which BTC slowly flowed out, and of course, he may have more than one wallet).

After the incident of buying pizza with Bitcoin, as the price of Bitcoin continued to rise, netizens kept updating the latest market prices of these two pizzas in the comments. Laszlo also commented that he didn’t expect Bitcoin to rise so quickly.

Even though Bitcoin became more and more valuable later on, in an interview regarding the pizza transaction incident, Laszlo Hanyecz stated that he did not feel regret for that 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 using his graphics card.

In fact, after completing the first transaction, Laszlo Hanyecz began to pay frequently in Bitcoin, spending about 100,000 BTC before and after, worth more than $4 billion now. The pizza that Laszlo bought for about $30 worth of 10,000 bitcoins at the time is now worth more than $260 million.

Laszlo himself has always been relatively low-key; he does not have his own social media accounts, and it is unknown whether he has become wealthy due to Bitcoin.

However, we can continue to follow the whereabouts of the 10,000 bitcoins that Laszlo bought after purchasing pizza.

The seller who made the deal with Laszlo Hanyecz was a 19-year-old California boy named Jeremy Sturdivant. He got involved with Bitcoin in 2009 and mined several thousand bitcoins himself. Jeremy was actually also an early consumer of Bitcoin, using it to make 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 Bitcoin would have such a large appreciation potential in the future. Even so, he does not regret spending those Bitcoins; he believes that the transaction of selling pizza brought him a total income of 400 dollars, appreciating tenfold, and this deal was still quite cost-effective.

Later, the price trend of bitcoin was obvious to all, and in May 2023, the market and capital are still confident in bitcoin and looking forward to 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 out of it because there’s 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 be working full-time in 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 was able to participate. “After all, he provided us with Bitcoin Core on MacOS and GPU mining—along with the pizza meme, which may not be as important or impressive as Hanyecz’s other contributions, but for the community, it has made May 22 unforgettable (and delicious) every year.”