Laszlo Hanyecz and the 10,000 BTC pizza transaction

The 2010 exchange

On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz exchanged 10,000 BTC for two large Papa John’s pizzas. This transaction involved Jeremy Sturdivant, who accepted the offer on the BitcoinTalk forum using the username jercos. Hanyecz posted his offer on May 18, 2010, requesting toppings like onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, and pepperoni. At the time, the 10,000 BTC cost Hanyecz approximately $41. Sturdivant paid approximately $25 for the pizzas and kept the 10,000 BTC. This transaction appears in block 57,043 of the blockchain. Hanyecz, a software developer from Jacksonville, Florida, ported the Bitcoin client to macOS, making the software available on Apple’s platform for the first time. He also became the first person known to mine Bitcoin with a graphics processing unit, a development he discussed directly with Satoshi Nakamoto, who expressed concern about an "arms race" in mining hardware and preferred that mining remain accessible to ordinary computers. I judge the 2010 transaction to be a clear exchange of code for commerce. Does the community still debate the efficiency of that original exchange?

Technical history and the 2018 redux

Hanyecz utilized the Lightning Network for another pizza purchase on February 25, 2018, spending 0.00649 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas. This transaction used Bitcoin’s layer-2 scaling solution. Before the 2010 transaction, Hanyecz completed a single SVN commit, r123, on August 4, 2010, to resolve macOS compilation issues. He remains one of only four SVN committers on record besides Satoshi Nakamoto. I consider his early work on GPU mining a major factor in the hardware centralization that Satoshi Nakamoto’s design did not anticipate. Hanyecz spent a total of 100,000 BTC on food orders in the weeks following the first deal. Because miners earned 50 BTC for each block, Hanyecz only needed to validate 200 blocks to recoup his original 10,000 BTC. He told Cointelegraph that he does not regret the original transaction because it allowed him to be part of early history. You should note that Sturdivant, then 19 years old, spent his Bitcoin on travel and video games rather than holding the assets. The 10,000 BTC transaction in 2010 was the only one in block 57,043 besides the Coinbase transaction that paid the 50 BTC mining subsidy. It took four days from the forum post to the pizza delivery.

2026 market context

On September 18, 2026, the market price for one Bitcoin reached $77,979.54. This value fell $39,132 below the price from one year ago, when Bitcoin traded at $117,111.87. On May 22, 2026, the price for a single coin sat at $77,546.34. The 10,000 BTC spent in 2010 would have a value of $777.87 million based on the May 2026 price of $77,787 per coin. I calculate the 2010 purchase value at $777.87 million using the May 22, 2026 price.

The 2025 all-time high reached $126,198.07 on October 6. Bitcoin remains volatile, with the price dropping tens of thousands of dollars within months. I find the $777.87 million valuation for the 2026 anniversary to be lower than the $1.106 billion valuation seen during the 2025 anniversary. Bitcoin’s market capitalization is roughly $1.33 trillion. The 10,000 BTC used in 2010 equals a value of over 650 billion Euros. Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap with a market capitalization of $233 billion. One month ago, Bitcoin traded at $64,324.45.