in may 2010, california student jeremy sturdivant, then 19, noticed a strange request on an internet cryptocurrency forum: he could receive 10,000 bitcoins, at the time reportedly valued at $41, in exchange for the Delivery of two large pizzas to Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz, 28.
sturdivant completed the order and sent him two large pizzas (cheese and “supreme”) from papa john’s, a transaction that would become the first physical purchase made with bitcoin in history, marked by the annual pizza day of bitcoin on May 22.
Reading: 10000 bitcoin pizza
but sturdivant didn’t save the bitcoins for the future; instead, he spent them all on travel.
Today, that modest haul of 10,000 bitcoins would be worth a whopping $365 million.
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“I had no idea how big it would be,” sturdivant said. But despite losing unlimited riches, the 30-year-old said he is “proud to have played a part” in the “global phenomenon.”
The tale is now the stuff of bitcoin legend. In his May 18, 2010, Bitcointalk.org post, Hanyecz — a forum contributor — made the request, including his palate preferences: “I like things like onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, pepperoni, etc. just standard stuff no weird fish topping or anything like that,” he wrote.
Sturdivant followed through on Hanyecz’s appeal — and the rest is history.
Launched in 2009, bitcoin wouldn’t hit 1:1 to the dollar until early 2011. And while the price is volatile even today, it’s safe to say that sturdivant’s loot could have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars if had decided to invest the funds.
“If he had treated it as an investment, he might have held out a little longer,” Sturdivant told the Telegraph in 2018 about spending his winnings on a road trip with his girlfriend. “He would never have thought that the same number of bitcoins would have purchasing power on the order of real estate.”
“If I had treated it as an investment, I might have held on a little longer.”
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“Looking back,” sturdivant admitted to bitcoin who’s who, it’s “crazy” to think that anyone has that much bitcoin today.
and, as a sturdivant, hanyecz has said in previous interviews that he has no regrets about his craving-induced purchase.
“I wanted to get into pizza because it was free pizza to me,” he told bitcoin magazine in 2019. “I got pizza for contributing to an open source project. hobbies are usually a time sink and a money sink, and in this case, my hobby bought me dinner.
“I think it’s great to have been a part of bitcoin’s early history in that way,” he told Coin Telegraph in 2018. Hanyecz, now 39, went on to spend 100,000 bitcoin (currently $3.8 billion) on pizza only in the summer of 2010.
“I’d like to think what I did helped,” he added. “But I think if it wasn’t for me, someone else would have come.”
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