Bitcoin Pizza Day: 10,000 BTC for Two Pizzas

10,000 BTC for two Papa John's pizzas. The most expensive meal in history. The man who bought them doesn't regret it.

The $800M+ pizza

On May 22, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz posted on the Bitcoin forum: "I'll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas." Jeremy Sturdivant, a 19-year-old in the UK, took him up on it - he ordered two Papa John's pizzas delivered to Hanyecz's house in Jacksonville, Florida, and received 10,000 BTC in return.

It was the first known commercial transaction using Bitcoin. At the time, 10,000 BTC was worth about $41. At Bitcoin's 2024 peak, those same coins were worth over $1.2 billion. Even at current prices, the two pizzas are worth north of $750 million. It is the most expensive food order in human history by several orders of magnitude.

Hanyecz does not regret it. He has said in multiple interviews that using Bitcoin for real transactions was exactly the point. If nobody ever spent Bitcoin, it would have no value as a currency. His pizza purchase proved that BTC could be used to buy real things in the real world - a critical moment for the network's credibility. Without someone willing to spend bitcoin, it was just numbers on a screen.

May 22 is now celebrated annually as "Bitcoin Pizza Day." Crypto companies run promotions. Pizza chains post Bitcoin memes. The community treats it as a founding holiday - the day Bitcoin proved it was more than a science experiment.

Hanyecz went on to mine and spend thousands more Bitcoin in the early days. He is not bitter. He understood something that most crypto speculators still do not: currencies are meant to be used, not hoarded. His pizza purchase did more for Bitcoin's legitimacy than any amount of holding would have.