Man Paid Fortune For Pizza

In May 2010, a short message appeared on a small internet forum for a strange new invention called Bitcoin. It was written by a programmer in Florida, and it was not a question, a complaint or a piece of news. It was a hungry man’s offer: “I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.”

Four days later, the pizzas arrived. The meal became the most famous lunch in the history of money, and every year the world celebrates its birthday. To understand why, do not look at the story all at once. Look at it the way an accountant would — one line of the receipt at a time.

First, Read the Receipt

• Date: 22 May 2010
• Buyer: Laszlo Hanyecz, a software programmer from Jacksonville, Florida
• The helper: Jeremy Sturdivant, a 19-year-old forum user known as “jercos”
• The order: Two large Papa John’s pizzas — one cheese, one supreme
• The price of the food: About 41 US dollars
• Paid with: 10,000 bitcoins, sent directly from one person to another

It looks ordinary, doesn’t it? A man, a teenager, two pizzas, 41 dollars. Now read each line slowly, because every line hides a surprise.

Line One, the Buyer: A Programmer With Too Many Coins

Laszlo Hanyecz was not a speculator or a gambler. He was one of Bitcoin’s earliest builders. In April 2010, just days after joining the forum, he created the first version of the Bitcoin software for Apple Mac computers, which until then had only worked on Windows and Linux.

Then, in early May 2010 — days before the pizza post — he discovered something big: bitcoin could be “mined,” meaning earned by letting a computer solve puzzles, far faster using a graphics card than an ordinary processor. Miners everywhere rushed to copy the idea, and the discovery helped change Bitcoin forever.

The side effect was simple. Hanyecz’s computers were producing coins in large amounts — thousands of them — at a time when almost nobody wanted them. He had a wallet full of a currency that could not buy anything at all. So he decided to test a question that sounds silly and turned out to be historic: could these coins buy him dinner?

Line Two, the Order: Two Large Pizzas, Please

On 18 May 2010, Hanyecz posted his offer on the Bitcointalk forum. He asked for two large pizzas, so he would have leftovers to nibble on the next day, and he named the toppings he liked: onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, pepperoni and the like — nothing unusual, just a normal family order.

Another forum user gently pointed out the obvious problem: those 10,000 coins could be sold for about 41 dollars in real cash. Hanyecz was not bothered. He answered, in effect, that he simply liked the idea of being able to say he had paid for a pizza with bitcoins.

Then the post sat there. One day passed. Two days. Three. Nobody wanted the deal.

Line Three, the Helper: A Teenager Named “jercos”

On the fourth day, somebody finally raised a hand. Jeremy Sturdivant was 19 years old, known on the forum by the name “jercos.” He accepted the offer, picked up the phone, and ordered two large Papa John’s pizzas to be delivered to Hanyecz’s home in Florida.

There was no payment company in between, no card, no bank. Hanyecz sent 10,000 bitcoins directly to Sturdivant, person to person, exactly the way Bitcoin’s inventor had imagined. Hanyecz then posted photographs of the pizzas as proof that the trade had really happened. They became some of the most famous food photographs ever taken.

Sturdivant’s own ending is almost as funny as the main story. He later spent his 10,000 bitcoins when they were worth around 400 dollars in total, using them to pay for a road trip with his girlfriend. And like Hanyecz, he has said he holds no regrets, and is simply glad to be part of Bitcoin’s early history.

Honestly, my opinion is that neither young man was foolish that day. One wanted dinner and a small piece of history; the other wanted an adventure. Both of them got exactly what they paid for — and the receipt only looks mad when you read it with tomorrow’s prices.

Line Four, the Date: 22 May 2010

That date is now a small public holiday in the technology world: Bitcoin Pizza Day, celebrated every year on 22 May with meetups, pizza parties and special events around the globe. The celebrations really grew after 2014, as Bitcoin’s price climbed and the story spread through the news and social media.

Why does a lunch deserve its own day? Because 22 May 2010 is the first documented time that anyone used bitcoin to buy a physical thing in the real world. Before that day, Bitcoin was an idea, a piece of software and a lively argument. After that day, it was also money — because money is simply the thing people agree to accept, and a teenager in 2010 agreed to accept it for pizza.

But Wait — What Even Was Bitcoin in 2010?

It helps to remember how tiny Bitcoin was when the pizzas arrived. The network had launched on 3 January 2009, created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, whose real identity is still unknown. When Hanyecz posted his offer, Bitcoin was barely a year old, known only to a small circle of cryptography fans and hobbyists.

The numbers show how worthless the coins seemed. In October 2009, the first rough exchange rate valued one dollar at 1,309 bitcoins. The first simple exchange website, BitcoinMarket.com, had opened only in March 2010, two months before the pizza. Coins were mined on home computers, the way Hanyecz mined his. At the moment of the great pizza trade, one bitcoin was worth about 0.004 dollars — less than half a cent. The 10,000 coins on the receipt were simply a fair price for two pizzas: about 41 dollars of food for about 41 dollars of coins.

The Maths That Hurts: What Those Coins Became

Now comes the part of the receipt that makes people put their head in their hands. Remember, these are prices from the past — peaks the market reached and then left behind, since Bitcoin’s price swings up and down sharply. They are not today’s price.

• In 2010, the 10,000 coins on the receipt were worth about $41.
• By February 2014, with bitcoin trading at around $600, the same pile of coins was worth roughly $6 million. Hanyecz wrote on the forum that people could call him stupid if they liked, but it had been a great deal at the time.
• In 2021, at that year’s high prices, each single pizza — half the order, 5,000 bitcoins — was worth about $344 million. The pair of them together: close to $688 million.
• In May 2025, bitcoin reached a record price of $111,999 per coin — and it did so on 22 May, the 15th anniversary of the pizza purchase itself. On that day, the 10,000 coins from the receipt were worth more than $1.1 billion.

And here is the twist most people never hear: the famous receipt was not even his biggest spending. Hanyecz kept his pizza offer open all summer, buying pizza after pizza with bitcoin, spending more than 79,000 bitcoins on pizza alone during 2010. His wallet records show total outflows of more than 81,000 coins between April and November that year. At 2025 peak prices, that larger pile would have been worth billions more.

Does Laszlo Regret It?

This is the question everyone asks him, and his answer has never changed. In a 2019 interview, he said: “This transaction made Bitcoin real in my eyes. It wasn’t worth much at the time. I wouldn’t have spent $100 million on pizza, right? But if I hadn’t done that, maybe Bitcoin wouldn’t have become so popular.”

He has described the feeling of that summer differently too: like winning the internet, because his hobby had bought him dinner. And in February 2018, eight years after the famous lunch, he bought pizza with bitcoin one more time — this time using a new system called the Lightning Network, paying just 0.00649 bitcoin for two Papa John’s pizzas, to prove the technology had grown up. A man haunted by regret does not return to the scene of the story, smiling, to do it again.

What the Lunch Actually Bought the World

So what did the most expensive lunch in history really purchase? Not pizza. Proof.

Before 22 May 2010, nobody could be certain that Bitcoin would ever work as money. It lived in code and in theory, passed between hobbyists like a collectible token. The pizza trade was the experiment that answered the question: yes, a stranger will accept this digital coin, carry real food to a real door, and both sides will walk away satisfied. Every card payment, every shop sign reading “Bitcoin accepted here,” and every Bitcoin Pizza Day party since then stands on that small, tasty proof.

Laszlo Hanyecz did not lose a fortune on 22 May 2010. At the prices of that day, he paid a perfectly fair 41 dollars for his dinner. What he bought with it was something no amount of money could purchase later at any price: the receipt that started it all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who paid 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas?

A Florida programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz. He was an early Bitcoin miner and developer who posted the offer on the Bitcointalk forum on 18 May 2010, wanting to test whether bitcoin could buy something real.

When is Bitcoin Pizza Day, and why is it celebrated?

Bitcoin Pizza Day falls on 22 May every year. It marks the day in 2010 when Hanyecz’s pizzas were delivered, completing the first documented purchase of a physical good using bitcoin.

How much were the two pizzas worth at the time?

About 41 US dollars. At the exchange value of May 2010, when one bitcoin was worth roughly 0.004 dollars, 10,000 bitcoins were a fair match for the price of two large Papa John’s pizzas.

Who was “jercos,” the person who accepted the bitcoins?

Jeremy Sturdivant, a 19-year-old forum user known as “jercos.” He ordered the pizzas for delivery to Hanyecz’s home and received the 10,000 bitcoins in a direct, person-to-person transfer. He later spent the coins, worth around 400 dollars when he used them, on a road trip.

Does Laszlo Hanyecz regret spending 10,000 bitcoins on pizza?

No. He has said many times that he has no regrets, because the purchase proved bitcoin could really be spent like money. He kept buying pizza with bitcoin through the summer of 2010, spending more than 79,000 bitcoins in total on pizza that year.

Sources

• Bitcoin Magazine — Bitcoin Pizza Day: 15 Years Since 10,000 BTC Bought Two Pizzas and Changed Everything: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-day-15-years-since-10000-btc-bought-two-pizzas-and-changed-everything
• Gemini Cryptopedia — Bitcoin Pizza Day: The 10,000 Bitcoin Pizza: https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/10000-bitcoin-pizza-day-bitcointalk-btc-pizza-day
• FinanceFeeds — When Did Bitcoin Pizza Day Happen?: https://financefeeds.com/when-did-bitcoin-pizza-day-happen/