Everyone talks about Laszlo Hanyecz’s pizza purchase as if it were just a curious anecdote. But here’s the interesting part: that guy did much more than buy two pizzas with bitcoin. In fact, if you look closely at the story, Hanyecz was one of the early key engineers who accelerated the entire Bitcoin network in its early days.

In early 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz joined the Bitcointalk forum (where Satoshi Nakamoto posted), and almost immediately started making serious technical contributions. First, he created the first Bitcoin client for MacOS. Until then, it only worked on Windows and Linux. His work enabled any Mac user to run the original Bitcoin Core software. It sounds simple, but it was the foundation for all the Bitcoin wallets we use today on Mac.

But what was really wild was what happened next. Hanyecz discovered that he could mine bitcoin using his computer’s GPU instead of the CPU. Graphics cards are exponentially more powerful for this. When he announced it in May 2010, he wrote something like: “I’ve updated the MacOS client… it will use your GPU to generate bitcoin. It really works if you’ve got a good card, like an NVIDIA 8800.”

That set off a frenzy. Bitcoin’s total hashrate multiplied by 130,000% within a few months. Suddenly, people started building mining farms in basements and garages. That was the prototype of everything we see today in the industry.

Now comes the interesting part: Satoshi responded to Hanyecz directly. He wrote something like he was concerned that this would centralize mining power too much in the hands of people with expensive hardware. Satoshi was somewhat uncomfortable with the change that Hanyecz had brought about.

And this is where the story becomes speculative but fascinating. Some believe Hanyecz felt guilty—maybe he thought, “Damn, I unintentionally changed the game.” In a 2019 interview, Hanyecz acknowledged that he stopped promoting GPU mining afterward, saying something like, “I thought, my God, I think I ruined their project.”

What if the famous pizza purchase was a form of penance? Spending his mined bitcoins in a symbolic way. Because here’s the wild fact: Laszlo Hanyecz didn’t just buy pizza once. Between April and November 2010, he received and spent more than 81,000 BTC from his address. Today, that’s equivalent to more than $8.6 billion.

In his original post, Hanyecz made it clear that it was an “open offer.” He made multiple purchases. In February 2014, he wrote: “I spent all the bitcoin on pizza a long time ago.” Although no one can verify whether it was all pizza—or other things—or if he simply gave bitcoin to new people on Bitcointalk (which was common when Bitcoin was worth almost nothing).

What’s fascinating about Laszlo Hanyecz is how he looked at all of this years later. In 2019, when asked whether it hurt him to have spent those bitcoins when they’re now worth billions, he answered with a perspective worth considering. He said both sides thought they were making a good deal at the time. That it felt like he’d “won on the Internet” because he transformed his computing power into free food.

“I coded, mined bitcoin, and that day I felt like I had won,” he said. “I received pizza for contributing to an open-source project. Normally, a hobby costs you time and money. In my case, my hobby paid for dinner.”

It’s a different way to think about opportunity cost. Hanyecz didn’t know Bitcoin would end up where it is today. To him, the transaction was a win at that moment. And historically speaking, his technical contributions were much more valuable than the pizza.