Bitcoin Pizza Day: the Dinner That Changed Crypto Forever

If you've ever regretted splurging on delivery, imagine this: you order two pizzas, and fifteen years later, realize you paid $850 million for them. Welcome to Bitcoin Pizza Day – crypto's most delicious inside joke and one of its most important milestones.

Every May 22, crypto fans worldwide celebrate this legendary moment. What began as a casual craving in an internet forum turned into the first-ever real-world transaction using Bitcoin (BTC). Two pizzas from Papa John’s became a symbol of belief, risk, and the wild ride of early crypto adoption.

This isn’t just about pizza. It’s about the spark that lit a revolution. And yes, it really did cost 10,000 BTC.

The $850 Million Pizza Order

Picture this: It's 2010. Bitcoin is so new it barely has a price. Most people think it's a geek experiment with zero real-world use. And yet, a Florida programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz decides to make a bold move.

On May 18, he posted on the BitcoinTalk forum offering 10,000 BTC to anyone who can get him two large pizzas.

Four days later, on May 22, a 19-year-old student named Jeremy Sturdivant took him up on it. He ordered two large mushroom pizzas from Papa John’s and had them delivered to Hanyecz. In return, he received 10,000 BTC.

At the time, that was worth around $41.

Today? That pizza order would be worth more than $850 million. It remains the most expensive pizza purchase in history and possibly the most famous meal in digital finance. For context, at Bitcoin's all-time high in 2021, the value of that order briefly surpassed $690 million. As Bitcoin continues to mature, the price tag of those two pizzas keeps growing – a standing symbol of crypto's exponential rise.

Was It Worth It?

Most people would lose sleep for a decade if they spent a future fortune on pizza. But Hanyecz isn't like most people. He’s publicly said he doesn’t regret it. He saw it as an experiment – a test of Bitcoin's potential to function as money.

“Somebody had to do it,” Hanyecz told The New York Times years later. “I was trying to make it useful as a currency.”

And he did. That simple pizza exchange gave Bitcoin its first tangible value in the real world. It set a precedent: digital money could buy physical goods.

Notably, Hanyecz didn’t stop with that one transaction. He continued to use Bitcoin for other small purchases, contributing code to improve Bitcoin’s software and evangelizing its use as a peer-to-peer payment system. In that sense, he wasn't just an early adopter – he was a builder.

The Ripple Effect

It’s easy to laugh at the idea of pizza triggering a global financial revolution. But in hindsight, Bitcoin Pizza Day represents something much bigger than a quirky trivia fact. It marks a turning point in tech culture – when digital assets stepped outside the forum bubble and entered real life.

In 2010, cryptocurrencies had no roadmap, no credibility, and almost no value. The few people mining Bitcoin back then did it on laptops in their bedrooms. Mining was simple, energy use was minimal, and the idea of scarcity was purely theoretical.

The real power of Bitcoin Pizza Day is symbolic: it showed that value in the crypto world wasn’t just a concept. It could be negotiated, transferred, and consumed.

This is why the pizza story stuck. It was absurd enough to go viral, and viral enough to be remembered. In a world where early Bitcoin users were dismissed as dreamers or scammers, Hanyecz's pizza made headlines because it was simple, tangible, and just weird enough to be real.

The evolution of Bitcoin

To truly appreciate the weight of the pizza story, you need to imagine the landscape in 2010. Bitcoin was traded peer-to-peer or through niche platforms. There were no regulated exchanges. No institutional money. The term "cryptocurrency" hadn't even been standardized.

There were maybe a few thousand people globally who had even heard of Bitcoin. Mining rewards were 50 BTC per block, and a powerful home PC could mine hundreds a day. The idea that Bitcoin would ever exceed $1 in value was speculative at best. This was a time when people sent BTC just to test if it worked, not because they believed it was money.

In 2010, 10,000 bitcoins could be mined in just a few days on a regular home computer. The network hashrate was negligible, the difficulty was minimal, and energy consumption was not even perceived as a factor. By May 22, 2010, approximately 3.3–3.4 million BTC had been mined by a small circle of early enthusiasts.

In 2025, it would be impossible to mine 10,000 BTC even for an entire data center. Energy costs, complexity, competition, infrastructure, everything has become an order of magnitude more complex and expensive.

Bitcoin’s evolution:

• 2010

50 BTC per block, dozens of transactions per day, software in beta

• 2025

3.125 BTC per block, millions of users, developed ecosystem, Layer 2 solutions, custodial services, banking integration, ETF, legal recognition in a number of countries, industrial mining.

Bitcoin capitalization has exceeded $2 trillion, which is more than the GDP of most countries. The whole world is talking about Bitcoin, from retail investors to governments. Only 15 years have passed since the purchase of pizza until the approval of spot ETFs in the United States. Over $800 billion has already passed through Bitcoin ETFs, volumes comparable to the funds of the largest tech giants like Apple or Microsoft.

Pizza Day is not just the first purchase. It is the day when the digital unit began its journey to becoming a global institutional asset. Bitcoin has grown from an experiment into an asset that is compared to gold. That’s what makes the 10,000 BTC pizza so powerful: it was a leap of faith in a system no one trusted yet.

From $41 to Nearly a Billion

Price of 10,000 pizzas

The infamous pizza purchase, once worth a modest $41, has become one of the most referenced case studies in financial history. The chart shows the estimated cost of those 10,000 BTC pizzas on every May 22 from 2010 to 2025 – and the figures are staggering. In just fifteen years, Bitcoin’s price has soared over 2.2 billion percent. This level of growth is virtually unheard of in traditional finance. No stock, commodity, or fiat currency has ever matched such a trajectory.

Bitcoin Pizza Day isn't just a crypto holiday – it's a psychological anchor. It embodies two powerful market emotions: regret and FOMO. “I could’ve been a millionaire” has become a cultural meme, a cautionary tale, and a rallying cry for early adoption. This one story continues to influence how investors assess risk, evaluate new projects, and decide whether to hold or exit a position.

More Than Just Pizza

Over the years, Bitcoin Pizza Day has evolved into a grassroots holiday for crypto believers. It celebrates not just Bitcoin's rise but the cultural shift it symbolizes. In the same way that nerdy Apple users once marked milestones with launch parties and midnight lines, crypto fans now gather (online and off) to toast the blockchain with a slice.

Here’s how people celebrate:

• Buy or swap BTC – in honor of Bitcoin Pizza day

• Order your own two pizzas –  enjoy them while celebrating the historic Bitcoin transaction

• Host a Bitcoin-themed pizza party – costume contests, trivia games, NFT raffles, or a DIY pizzeria setup

• Join giveaways and token airdrops – exchanges and crypto brands love to mark the date with special promotions

• Watch documentaries or livestreams – many content creators and crypto influencers host retrospectives or talk shows discussing the legacy of Bitcoin

The Legacy of Laszlo

Laszlo Hanyecz might have "lost" millions, but he earned something else: a place in tech history. His decision proved that Bitcoin wasn't just a math project. It could be used, not just traded. Without his pizza, it might have taken longer for that idea to catch on.

His story is a useful reminder of how new technologies often move forward. Not through billion-dollar IPOs or Silicon Valley speeches, but through small, almost silly acts of belief.

He turned digital code into dinner. And that dinner helped build a trillion-dollar industry.

Interestingly, Jeremy Sturdivant – the student who received the 10,000 BTC – didn’t hold onto them either. He spent the coins within months, seeing them as a fun, experimental currency rather than a long-term investment. His perspective, like Hanyecz’s, reflected the genuine curiosity of the early crypto era.

Fun Facts: The Quirky Side of Bitcoin Pizza Day

• Laszlo made multiple pizza purchases. After the first successful transaction, Hanyecz continued buying pizzas with Bitcoin for a short period – spending well over 100,000 BTC in total. That’s billions in today’s value… all for dough, cheese, and tomato sauce.

• No taxes were paid. At the time of the transaction, there were no clear tax regulations on crypto. Today, that same purchase would trigger a significant capital gains event.

• Papa John’s didn’t accept Bitcoin. Contrary to what many think, Papa John’s wasn’t directly involved. The pizzas were bought with fiat by Jeremy Sturdivant, then paid for in BTC by Laszlo. The chain never knew the role it played until much later.

• Sturdivant didn’t hold onto the BTC. Jeremy spent the 10,000 BTC soon after receiving them, using them for travel and expenses. He later said he didn’t regret it, because holding them long-term never crossed his mind.

• Bitcoin Pizza Day has its own NFTs. Several marketplaces release limited-edition NFT pizzas each year to commemorate the holiday. Some of these now resell for thousands of dollars.

• There’s a Pizza DAO. Yes, a decentralized autonomous organization entirely focused on celebrating pizza culture. They host global Bitcoin Pizza Day parties and even help local pizzerias accept crypto.

• You can track the current price of those pizzas. Such sites update numbers in real-time to show how much Laszlo’s 10,000 BTC would be worth today.

Conclusion

Bitcoin Pizza Day isn’t about nostalgia. It’s a yearly check-in on how far we’ve come. From pizzas to protocol upgrades, from underground forums to Fortune 500 portfolios. Every slice tells the same story: big revolutions often start small. Sometimes with nothing more than a kid, a coder, and two mushroom pizzas. So this May 22, whether you're holding BTC or just holding a slice, remember: you're part of something historic.

SimpleSwap reminds you that this article is provided for informational purposes only and does not provide investment advice. All purchases and cryptocurrency investments are your own responsibility.