You know that feeling when you realize you could have been a billionaire? Jeremy Sturdivant knows it better than most.

Thirteen years ago this month, a 19-year-old from California was scrolling through Bitcointalk when he spotted something that would change everything. Some guy named Laszlo Hanyecz was offering 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. Just two pizzas. Nobody was taking him up on it.

Sturdivant, going by the handle Jercos, decided to help. He called Papa John's, ordered two large pizzas from California to be delivered to Laszlo's place in Jacksonville, Florida, and paid with his debit card. Simple as that. Laszlo sent him 10,000 BTC, and Bitcoin Pizza Day was born.

Here's where it gets interesting though. If Sturdivant had just held those coins? We're talking about roughly $786 billion at today's prices. Yeah, you read that right. His jeremy sturdivant net worth would have been absolutely astronomical. Instead, he sold them pretty much immediately to cover a trip with his girlfriend.

In interviews years later, he admitted he had no clue Bitcoin would become what it is. He wasn't thinking investment - he was just helping out a fellow bitcoiner. "It seemed fair to both parties and, well, who doesn't like pizza?" he said back in 2018. He figured even with fees, he could've converted it back to cover the pizza cost anyway.

The wild part? He doesn't seem bitter about it. Sure, he says he "certainly" regrets selling, but he's more amazed at what Bitcoin became than angry about what he missed. He told The Telegraph that he never imagined those 10,000 BTC could eventually buy real estate. What really gets him is seeing cryptocurrency as a tool for economic freedom - that's what matters more than the money.

Meanwhile, Laszlo Hanyecz (the guy who got the pizzas) takes a similar approach. He actually mined those bitcoins himself when they were basically worthless. "I try not to think about it," he said. "There's no point, and it would just drive me crazy." He figures if he hadn't done that transaction, Bitcoin might never have caught on the way it did. Hard to argue with that logic.

So every May 22, the crypto community celebrates Pizza Day - not just as a meme, but as the moment Bitcoin proved it had real-world value. It's when people realized this wasn't just code on some nerds' computers anymore. It was actual money that could buy actual things.

Sturdivant's take? He's proud he was part of something that went from an interesting concept to a global phenomenon so fast. That's worth more than any amount of Bitcoin, he seems to think. Whether that's genuine perspective or the best cope ever, I'll let you decide.