Bitcoin Pizza Day: The $500M Slice That Changed Finance Forever

On May 22, 2010, a programmer paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas—igniting crypto’s first real-world transaction. Today, that order would be worth half a billion dollars.

How a hungry dev accidentally created blockchain’s most infamous meme

The deal seemed innocent: Laszlo Hanyecz just wanted dinner. But his BTC payment—now immortalized as Bitcoin Pizza Day—became the ultimate HODLer’s cautionary tale. While Wall Street still debates ’intrinsic value,’ crypto natives celebrate the transaction that proved digital money could buy real-world goods (even if the exchange rate stings).

Ten years later, those uneaten pizzas cut deeper than any bear market—a delicious reminder that in crypto, history’s written by the hungry.

The history of Pizza Day

Over a decade ago, on May 22nd, 2010, a software developer named Laszlo Hanyecz carried out an extraordinary transaction that WOULD later become an important part of Bitcoin folklore. Hanyecz lived in Florida and was in search of two large pizzas. The act itself was hardly noteworthy. What was truly remarkable, however, was his desire to pay for his food with Bitcoin, thus conducting one of the first commercial transactions with the emerging digital currency.

In the Bitcointalk forum, where Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, was also active, Hanyecz asked if someone would deliver him two pizzas in exchange for 10,000 BTC. The delivery person could either bake the pizzas themselves or order them from a restaurant. It wasn’t until three days and multiple inquiries later that a 19-year-old student stepped forward and delivered two pizzas from the Papa John’s chain to the software developer. Soon after, Hanyecz spent the 10,000 bitcoins - now a considerable fortune - on video games.

A historic milestone

In 2010, Bitcoin was just over a year old, and its value was largely speculative. The 10,000 bitcoins Hanyecz paid were worth about $41 at the time - a reasonable amount for two large pizzas. However, the significance of Bitcoin Pizza Day extends beyond the price of those two pizzas. By completing the transaction, Hanyecz demonstrated that Bitcoin could be used as a medium of exchange, a crucial characteristic of any currency. According to the developer, Bitcoin was an interesting system, but no one was using the cryptocurrency as a form of payment. "And if nobody’s using it, it doesn’t matter how many bitcoins I own."