The Legend of Laszlo Hanyecz: How 10,000 Bitcoin for Pizza Changed Crypto Culture Forever

When Laszlo Hanyecz posted a simple bounty on the Bitcoin Talk Forum on May 18, 2010, offering 10,000 of his freshly-mined Bitcoin in exchange for two large pizzas, he unknowingly set in motion a moment that would define cryptocurrency culture for generations to come. Laszlo Hanyecz was not seeking fame or making a calculated financial move—he was simply looking for lunch, treating it as a playful experiment in proving that the digital currency he believed in could actually work in the real world.

The year was 2010, and Bitcoin was still largely an abstract concept to most people. The network had only been running for about 16 months, and the idea of exchanging digital tokens for tangible goods seemed far-fetched to nearly everyone. Few users on the forum even responded to Laszlo Hanyecz’s initial offer. Those who did were either unable to complete the transaction due to geographic limitations or uninterested in the novelty. But for Laszlo Hanyecz, the point wasn’t the pizza itself—it was the principle that Bitcoin could function as a genuine medium of exchange, not just as a speculative digital asset or computer science curiosity.

Laszlo Hanyecz’s Visionary Trade: The First Bitcoin Real-World Transaction

On May 22, 2010—just four days after posting his bounty—Laszlo Hanyecz triumphantly announced that he had successfully completed the transaction. He even uploaded a photograph of the pizzas as proof, cementing what would become known as Bitcoin Pizza Day. At the time, those 10,000 Bitcoin were worth approximately $30, making it a modest but historic purchase. The real significance of this moment lay not in the monetary value but in what it demonstrated: Bitcoin could cross the bridge from digital abstraction into physical reality.

This transaction marked the first time since Bitcoin’s creation that someone had used the currency to purchase something tangible in the offline world. It proved a fundamental assumption that Satoshi Nakamoto and early Bitcoin enthusiasts had made about the network—that it possessed genuine utility as a medium of exchange. Every cryptocurrency that came after Bitcoin would build on the foundation that Laszlo Hanyecz helped establish: that digital money could actually be spent on real things.

The post from Laszlo Hanyecz included specific details about his pizza preferences, showing his casual approach to the transaction. He wasn’t trying to pull off something extraordinary; he was simply treating Bitcoin as a tool that should actually work. The fact that he had to wait days for responses, and that most declined due to logistics, only reinforced how novel and underutilized Bitcoin still was in 2010. Few people possessed Bitcoin at all, and even fewer were willing to experiment with spending it.

From GPU Mining to Pizza: How an Early Bitcoin Pioneer Earned His Place in History

Understanding who Laszlo Hanyecz was helps explain why he felt confident enough to conduct this experiment. He was not just any Bitcoin user—he was a programmer and one of the earliest Bitcoin miners, and he holds the distinction of being the inventor of GPU mining, a breakthrough that would dramatically increase mining efficiency and make Bitcoin mining accessible to a much broader audience.

Because GPU mining was so efficient compared to CPU-based mining, Laszlo Hanyecz had accumulated an impressive quantity of Bitcoin in a remarkably short time. According to blockchain data tracked by the OXT blockchain explorer, his wallet began receiving substantial mining rewards from May 2010 onward. By mid-May, his holdings had climbed to over 20,000 Bitcoin. Crucially, when he spent 10,000 Bitcoin on pizza just days later, this proved to be only a fraction of his total Bitcoin stack. The data shows his wallet reaching a peak balance of 43,854 Bitcoin by June 2010—suggesting he was so prolific at mining that the 10,000 Bitcoin spent on pizza was quickly replenished.

This context changes how we should interpret Laszlo Hanyecz’s decision to spend such a large quantity of Bitcoin on pizza. For someone accumulating Bitcoin through mining at a rate of thousands per month, the transaction represented something different than it would for most other people. Laszlo Hanyecz wasn’t sacrificing a scarce resource; he was using an abundant tool to prove a principle. His background as a computer programmer and mining pioneer suggests he understood the technology more deeply than most, and his willingness to spend Bitcoin publicly was an act of faith in its future functionality.

Two Traders, Two Paths: Laszlo Hanyecz and Jeremy Sturdivant After the Deal

The person on the other side of the transaction was Jeremy Sturdivant, a 19-year-old from California who had begun mining Bitcoin in 2009, making him also an early adopter. Jeremy was not just passively holding Bitcoin; he was an active user who sought out opportunities to spend his Bitcoin in both online and offline settings whenever possible. In many ways, Jeremy Sturdivant embodied the same spirit as Laszlo Hanyecz—a believer in Bitcoin’s potential as an actual currency, not merely as a speculative asset.

What happened to the 10,000 Bitcoin that Jeremy Sturdivant received? He made the choice to spend them, using the proceeds to fund travel adventures with his girlfriend. When interviewed years later by Bitcoin Magazine in 2018, Jeremy Sturdivant reflected on the transaction without regret, even though the Bitcoin would eventually be worth billions of dollars. His perspective was refreshingly practical: at the time he received them, he had converted the Bitcoin into approximately $400 in cash value. By that standard, the transaction had appreciated tenfold before he even spent the proceeds. Rather than viewing the exchange as a missed financial opportunity, Jeremy Sturdivant saw it as a successful trade that had generated value for him at the moment it mattered.

What’s striking is that both participants in this historic transaction—Laszlo Hanyecz and Jeremy Sturdivant—maintained this same philosophical stance: neither regretted their involvement. In a financial culture obsessed with HODL and long-term speculation, both men chose a different path, prioritizing the actual utility and immediate value of Bitcoin over potential future gains. This choice says something profound about their character and their original vision for what Bitcoin could become.

Why Laszlo Hanyecz Chose Passion Over Profit: The Philosophy Behind a Crypto Icon

As Bitcoin’s price continued its dramatic ascent over the following years and decades, observers couldn’t resist calculating what those 10,000 Bitcoin would be worth in the future. By 2025, the pizza transaction represented a foregone gain of over $260 million—a staggering amount by any standard. Yet when Laszlo Hanyecz was later interviewed about his feelings on the transaction, his answer was consistent and unwavering: he felt no regret whatsoever.

In a 2019 interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Laszlo Hanyecz explained his original motivation in terms that revealed his mindset: “The reason I wanted to buy pizza with Bitcoin is because it was free pizza for me. I mean, I wrote this thing and mined Bitcoin, and I felt like I won the Internet that day—I earned pizza by contributing to open source projects.” His language here is crucial. He didn’t see himself as spending money; he saw himself as being rewarded for his work as a software developer. Unlike most hobbies, which require spending money and time, Laszlo Hanyecz’s involvement with Bitcoin had actually paid for his dinner.

This perspective illuminates why he never suffered from regret or FOMO about Bitcoin’s later appreciation. For Laszlo Hanyecz, Bitcoin was and has remained a hobby and a contribution to open source software development, not a career or a financial investment scheme. He has deliberately stayed out of the limelight, choosing not to open social media accounts and declining to position himself as a Bitcoin celebrity despite his historic role in its development. In his own words, he actively avoided drawing attention precisely because he feared being associated with the hype and because he didn’t want to become famous or to be mistaken for Satoshi Nakamoto.

Beyond the pizza transaction, records suggest that Laszlo Hanyecz has spent approximately 100,000 Bitcoin throughout his involvement with Bitcoin over the years—a total that would be worth more than $4 billion at 2025 prices. Yet this pattern of spending Bitcoin rather than hoarding it aligns perfectly with his philosophy: he used Bitcoin as intended, as a functioning currency and a community tool, not as a speculation vehicle.

Bitcoin Pizza Day: From Inside Joke to Cultural Monument in Crypto History

What began as a simple transaction for lunch has become one of the most enduring cultural touchstones in cryptocurrency history. May 22 each year is now celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day by communities around the world. What makes this day culturally significant is not merely its historical importance, but what it represents about Bitcoin’s earliest community: a group of people who believed in the technology so strongly that they were willing to use it, to spend it, and to take risks with it.

The pizza transaction has been transformed into what might be called a “meme” in the digital age—not in the sense of a funny image, but in the original sense of a culturally transmitted idea or behavior pattern. Every year, the Bitcoin community revisits this transaction, recalculating the current value of the pizza and marveling at how much Bitcoin has appreciated. Yet the true significance goes deeper than the dollars and cents.

Laszlo Hanyecz and Jeremy Sturdivant’s decision to transact with Bitcoin when it was still essentially worthless by later standards demonstrated remarkable confidence in the network’s fundamentals. They weren’t speculators waiting to cash out; they were users who wanted to prove that Bitcoin worked as a currency. Their willingness to spend Bitcoin, and their continued absence of regret, stands as a quiet rebuke to cultures of pure HODLing and get-rich-quick mentality that would later come to dominate cryptocurrency discourse.

As Bitcoin Magazine noted in their 2019 coverage, the significance of Laszlo Hanyecz extended far beyond the pizza transaction itself. He had contributed Bitcoin Core improvements, pioneered GPU mining on MacOS, and helped build the foundational infrastructure that made Bitcoin accessible and mineable for ordinary people. The pizza story may be more famous, but it represents just one facet of his contributions to Bitcoin’s development as both a technical system and a community.

Today, more than 15 years after Laszlo Hanyecz made his famous purchase, Bitcoin Pizza Day remains a treasured moment in crypto history. It serves as a reminder of a different era—when Bitcoin was about experimentation and utility rather than purely about investment returns. It honors two people, Laszlo Hanyecz and Jeremy Sturdivant, who chose to believe in something revolutionary and had the courage to actually use it, even when the world didn’t yet understand what they had discovered. That may be the most valuable legacy of all.