#Gate广场披萨节 Don’t cry over those two slices of pizza—the truth might sting you!

On May 22, it’s the crypto world’s once-a-year “Pizza Day.”

As you’d expect, your social circle is probably once again flooded with that same story: in 2010, programmer Laszlo spent 10,000 bitcoins to buy two pizzas. By today’s coin prices, what he ate back then is almost like a carrier battle group, or a skyscraper. The whole world feels his pain for him, using this story as the most tragic textbook for “missing out on financial freedom.”

Hold on. This man we’ve pitied for more than a decade may not even need your tears.

Today, at 57, he still lives in Florida and works as an ordinary programmer. When Bitcoin rose to $1, he sold most of his coins to buy a new computer. Faced with the swarm of media, he blacklisted all strangers—he just wanted to hide back inside a programmer’s shell. He once said one big truth: “Back then, I just wanted to eat pizza.”

You see, the “tragic character” that outsiders forced onto him—he never claimed it, from start to finish.

And when we clear the fog of history, we find a more crucial detail—one that’s always been overlooked: Laszlo wasn’t an ordinary retail investor; he was one of the early core founders of Bitcoin.

In that untamed early era, mining was still in the CPU competition stage. It was Laszlo who first cracked the technical hurdle of mining with graphics cards (GPU), enabling a leap in computing power by hundreds or even thousands of times. He also developed the first macOS version of the Bitcoin client, laying the groundwork for Bitcoin’s early network with his own hands.

Now, with that identity in mind, look back at that transaction.

Swapping 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas—was it really just because he was craving pizza? Really just spending them as “money”?

This likely wasn’t a simple act of consumption, but a great developer’s carefully considered, ritualistic piece of performance art and a stress test.

If Bitcoin were always just shuttling back and forth among geeks, it would forever be only a mathematical game within the circle—a string of code with no real-world anchor. Only when it leaves the computer and gets exchanged for a hot, filling pizza does it complete a closed loop in human real economic activity.

Laszlo wasn’t buying pizza—he was using this highly symbolic scene to loudly declare to the world: look, this thing called Bitcoin really can be used as money.

He used 10,000 “experimental tokens” that were almost worthless at the time to give Bitcoin, a newborn, its proof of birth in the real world. Where’s the craving? This is clearly a Promethean sacrifice. In fact, he spent a total of nearly 100,000 bitcoins on buying pizza, and later tested Lightning Network payments with just a tiny amount of bitcoins—throughout, he kept using action to pave the way for Bitcoin’s payment capabilities from start to finish.

And those obsessed with calculating “losses” are still trapped in the most mundane framework: measuring a rushing river with a static point. Let’s ask one question: if Laszlo hadn’t pulled off this pioneering feat, and if everyone had held onto their coins tightly without letting go since 2010, how could Bitcoin have survived until today? Your “if only it had been” doesn’t exist at all.

There is a cruel yet true logic: it’s precisely because someone spent the coins that Bitcoin has value.

What Laszlo ate wasn’t regret medicine—it was Bitcoin’s most glorious coming-of-age ceremony. He couldn’t become a standout name on the rich list, but he became a figure written into the history of the cypherpunk movement.

So, in future Pizza Days, instead of lamenting two imaginary “sky-high-priced pizzas,” it’s better to savor the deeper lesson behind it:

In this world, the ones that truly change the world are never the meticulous calculators, nor the hoarders fantasizing about getting rich overnight. It’s the builders with a pure heart—people willing to personally exchange “digital gold” for two hot pizzas.

His calm, everyday life today is exactly the perfect period at the end of this story.

Don’t be the bystander who only regrets after staring at historical candlestick charts. History has always been written by those who bury their heads in their work and know how to be content.$BTC