#Gate广场披萨节 🍕 Bitcoin Pizza Day: The man who spent 100k bitcoins on pizza

On May 22, 2010, an ordinary afternoon in Florida. Programmer Laszlo Hanyecz sat in front of his computer, hungry, and posted on the BitcoinTalk forum:

“I’ll give 10k bitcoins for two large pizzas. Italian sausage with green peppers, and another with mushrooms and olives, thanks.”

At that time, 1 bitcoin was barely worth $0.004, and 10,000 bitcoins were only about $40. The post sat for four days without response. Until the fifth day, a 19-year-old British teenager named jercos said, “I’ll order Papa John’s for you, you send me the coins.”

The deal was made. Laszlo took a photo — pixelated, with an open paper box inside were two pizzas that looked no different from today’s $30 takeout.

With that bite, the first physical transaction in the crypto world was made.

But he was more than just “Pizza Guy.” Laszlo developed the first Mac version of the Bitcoin client, and more importantly — he pioneered GPU mining. His code allowed ordinary people to mine Bitcoin with graphics cards, directly ending the CPU era. Satoshi once emailed him, saying, “I’m a bit worried about mining centralization.” Laszlo later joked, “I might have messed up Bitcoin.”

As for those BTC — he later spent nearly 100k coins on pizza, servers, gadgets. Based on today’s (2026.5.22) price of about $66,000 per bitcoin, the total value exceeds $6.6 billion.

A reporter asked him if he regrets it.

“No regrets. Bitcoin is meant to be spent. If everyone just hoards and never spends, it’s just a string of code forever.”

Today, 15 years later, every May 22, crypto enthusiasts around the world order a pizza. Not to laugh at “missing a billion,” but to remember a simple truth:

Money’s meaning lies in exchange, and the purpose of exchange is life.

Salute to that hungry man who fed the future. 🍕