BTC Spent on Two Pizzas in 2010 Now Worth $384 Million
3 min read
Today marks the 11th anniversary of BTC Pizza Day, an annual celebration of BTC and a solemn parable for the virtue of HODLing.
On May 22 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz, a Florida software programmer and one-time BTC core contributor, bought two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 BTC. It’s one of the first times that someone bought something with BTC, and
BTC pizza day: 10 years ago a programmer bought two Papa Johns pizzas for 10,000 $BTC.
That 10,000 $BTC was worth $30.
Today that 10,000 $BTC is worth $91million.
So think twice before using your BTC when you order today..pic.twitter.com/4GLOb9sfKR
— Luke Martin (@VentureCoinist) May 22, 2020
“I just want to report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza,” beamed Hanyecz the BitcoinTalk forum on May 22, 2010, before posting several photographs of the two Papa John’s pizzas he bought.
Those two pizzas cost $41 at the time. At today’s price, 10,000 bitcoins cost $384 million. And at BTC’s all-time high of $64,863 last month, those two pizzas would be worth $684 million.
In a Bloomberg interview in February, Hanyecz said he has no regrets about his purchase—although he advised using cash to buy pizzas.
The idea of holding tightly onto BTC didn’t make sense back in 2010, when each BTC was only worth a couple of cents.
Steve Ehrlich, CEO and founder of Voyager Digital, told Decrypt, “Back then, the tangible value of BTC seemed inconceivable, and its future uncertain, so one could justify that it was a fun social experiment.”
But a lot has changed since Hanyecz’s pizza purchase—and not just BTC’s price. BTC started out as a peer-to-peer cash system that early adherents hoped could replace central bank-controlled fiat money.
But the combination of a capped supply, an expensive mining system and heightened demand meant that BTC’s price and transaction fees kept rising, making it more valuable as “digital gold” rather than as a useful medium of exchange—and certainly not useful for buying pizza.
“I tried paying for pizza last night in BTC and was met with a puzzled look,” Jayne Cripps of digital asset brokerage GlobalBlock told Decrypt.
BTC pizza day means something different for supporters of BTC Cash, a cryptocurrency that hard-forked from BTC in 2017 to prime it for payments. A small community of BCH supporters still live like Laszlo Hanyecz did in 2010.
Hayden Otto, a BCH investor, told Decrypt he celebrated this year’s BTC pizza day with 30 others at Mama Teresa’s Pizzeria, a BCH-accepting restaurant in North Queensland, Australia. It’s “like BTC pizza day every day” for Otto and his fellow BCH spenders, he said.
The list of merchants accepting #BitcoinCash in North Queensland keeps growing, with the addition of Mama Teresa’s Pizzeria. Just in time for #BTC pizza day! pic.twitter.com/rMd3vJUDci
— BTC Cash City (@BitcoinCashCity) May 12, 2021
But BTC Cash, like all cryptocurrencies, isn’t any less volatile than BTC. It’s currently trading for $698, down 13% over the past 24 hours.
If you’re hungry, it’s still easier to keep buying your pizzas in cash.
