We all know the story of Bitcoin pizzas, right? Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two Papa John's pizzas 15 years ago. Today, that would be worth over a billion dollars. The Twitter community keeps mentioning this every year as the biggest regret in cryptocurrency history.

But here’s what many don’t know: Hanyecz didn’t just make that purchase once. He spent nearly 100,000 BTC in total during that initial Bitcoin period. Yes, almost 10 times the amount of that famous transaction. That’s more than 8,600 million dollars at current value. And he probably did it as a kind of act of penance.

Why penance? Because Laszlo Hanyecz was much more important to Bitcoin than people remember. In April 2010, just days after joining Bitcointalk, he created the first MacOS client for Bitcoin Core. Satoshi Nakamoto had originally coded Bitcoin only for Windows and Linux. Hanyecz’s contribution allowed Mac devices to run the software. Without that, there would be no Bitcoin wallets for Mac that we use today.

But there’s more. In May 2010, he discovered something that changed everything: he could mine Bitcoin using his computer’s graphics card instead of the processor. He wrote on Bitcointalk: “I’ve updated the Mac OS X binary file… It will use your GPU to generate bitcoin. This is really effective if you have a good GPU like an NVIDIA 8800.” GPUs are thousands of times more powerful than CPUs for mining.

Bitcoin’s hash rate skyrocketed 130,000% by the end of that year. This sparked Bitcoin’s first gold rush. Miners started building farms in basements, attics, and garages. These are the prototypes of the mega mining farms that dominate the network today.

Satoshi Nakamoto realized what Hanyecz had done. He wrote: “A big appeal for new users is that anyone with a computer can generate some free coins. But the GPU will limit this to only those with high-end hardware. It’s inevitable that GPU clusters will eventually corner all the coins, but I don’t want that day to come soon.”

In a 2019 interview, Hanyecz admitted he felt guilty. He said: “I thought, oh my God, I think I ruined your project. Sorry, buddy. I was worried some people would get discouraged because they couldn’t mine a block with a CPU.” Maybe that guilt is what led him to make that pizza offer, again and again.

According to blockchain records, Laszlo Hanyecz received and spent 81,432 BTC between April and November 2010. It can’t be verified if all of it was for pizza, other goods, or if he gifted bitcoin to new community members, which was common back then when Bitcoin was practically free.

What’s interesting is that Hanyecz has never seemed to regret this. In 2019, he told the story humorously: “An exchange was made because both parties thought they were getting a good deal. I felt like I was winning at the internet, getting free food. I thought, I’ve linked these GPUs together, I’ll mine twice as fast, I’ll only eat free food, I’ll never have to buy food again.” He continued: “I coded this and mined bitcoin and felt like I had won at the internet that day. I got pizza for contributing to an open-source project.”

For Hanyecz, he turned his electricity and computational power into dinner. He didn’t know Bitcoin would have the value it has today. From his perspective, it was a victory. And honestly, when you see it that way, it makes sense. A hobby usually consumes time and money. His helped him get dinner.