Here’s what happened to the 10,000 BTC from the ‘Bitcoin pizza’ story
Published on Sep 21, 2023 at 7:27 PM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on Sep 22, 2023 at 12:10 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Kate Bain
A guy once spent 10,000 Bitcoins on two large pizzas from Papa John’s – imagine that.
We’ve heard of the ‘Bitcoin pizza story’ before but the question we rarely ask is: what happened to money?
READ MORE: This man invested $22 in Bitcoin when it first launched and totally forgot about it
This is a well-known story that even people who aren’t into crypto are familiar with at this point.
Back when Bitcoin was just an infant, a man named Laszlo Hanyecz spent 10,000 BTC on two pizzas.
The pizzas only cost the equivalent of $40 at the time but fast-forward to 2023 and 10,000 Bitcoins are worth $265 million.
That’s enough to buy a private island, a private jet and a NYC penthouse.
An interview with Laszlo Hanyecz, the man who purchased two Papa Johns pizza's using 10,000 Bitcoin in 2010.
— Restudy History (@RestudyHistory) September 18, 2023
10,000 Bitcoin is currently worth over $250M+ pic.twitter.com/zBDL85SVn8
Every year ‘crypto bros‘ celebrate Bitcoin pizza day on the anniversary of this pioneering transaction but, strangely, very few people wonder what actually happened to the money.
The owner of the Papa John’s pizza shop missed out on the deal of the century because he used a third party to get $40 in cash.
A man named Jeremy Sturdivant acted as the middleman between Hanyecz and the pizza shop.
The (then) 19-year-old student who got ahold of the 10,000 BTC said he spend most of it on travel with his girlfriend.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Sturdivant said he “never thought that the same number of Bitcoin would have a purchasing power on the order of real estate.”
As for Hanyecz, he still maintains he has no regrets.
He said he wanted to “do the pizza thing because, to me, it was free pizza. I got pizza for contributing to an open-source project.”
He also said he had the chance to speak with Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous founder of Bitcoin, “once or twice”.
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