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On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz posted on the Bitcoin Forum: “I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas… like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day.” Jeremy Sturdivant accepted, ordered two Papa John’s pizzas, and the first real-world Bitcoin (BTC) transaction was complete.
16 years ago, Laszlo Hanyecz, a Floridian programmer, bought 2 Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 $BTC. Today, those pizzas would be valued at over $774M today.
Happy #Bitcoin Pizza Day, everyone! 🍕 pic.twitter.com/YlFnFgsSBX
— CoinGecko (@coingecko) May 22, 2026
The 10,000 BTC was worth approximately $41 at the time, establishing a reference price of $0.0041 per coin for the first time. “It wasn’t like Bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool,” Hanyecz later told the New York Times.
On May 22, 2026, those same 10,000 BTC are worth approximately $776 million. Bitcoin is trading at about $77,630 on Pizza Day 2026, per CoinGecko data. The market cap of the network Hanyecz helped activate with two pizzas stands at about $1.56 trillion.
Hanyecz’s transaction had a specific purpose: proving Bitcoin worked as money. He spent BTC to demonstrate that it had utility beyond a forum discussion, that someone would accept it, and that real value could transfer. The spending was the proof.
The companies accumulating Bitcoin in 2026 have inverted that logic entirely. Strategy holds 843,738 BTC worth approximately $65.5 billion, representing over 4% of Bitcoin’s 21-million maximum supply, per BitcoinTreasuries data. It listed Bitcoin sales as a funding option in a May 15 debt filing, citing financial pressure, not by design.
Twenty One Capital holds 43,514 BTC. Metaplanet holds 40,177 BTC. MARA Holdings holds 35,303 BTC. None of them is spending it. The thesis across all four is that the asset appreciates faster than any alternative use of the capital.
Saylor’s formulation, “never sell your Bitcoin,” is the precise philosophical opposite of Hanyecz’s “spend Bitcoin to prove it works.” Both positions validated Bitcoin: One proved it had value by using it; the other proves it has value by refusing to.
The price trajectory from Hanyecz’s $0.0041 reference rate to today’s $77,630 represents an 18.9 million-percent increase over 16 years. Each stage of that journey required a different adoption argument.
Strategy’s 8-K filing from May 15, which named Bitcoin as a potential funding source for debt obligations but then did not use it, demonstrates how far the asset has moved from Hanyecz’s original use case.
SpaceX disclosed 18,712 BTC in its initial public offering (IPO) filing on May 22, 2026, per BitcoinTreasuries data, making it the seventh-largest public Bitcoin holder on the day Hanyecz’s pizza purchase turns 16. The conversation is no longer whether Bitcoin can buy a pizza.
Hanyecz has said he has no regrets. The pizza purchase was not an investment decision gone wrong; it was a proof of concept that worked. Without that transaction establishing a real-world price reference, the entire subsequent price discovery mechanism would have had no starting point.
The Bitcoin treasury era that Saylor, Metaplanet, and Twenty One Capital are building is only possible because Hanyecz proved in 2010 that the asset had value worth preserving. The $776 million those pizzas are worth today is not evidence that Hanyecz made a mistake.
It is evidence that his proof of concept succeeded beyond any reasonable expectation held on May 22, 2010. BTC at $77,630 on the 16th anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day is up 18,900,000% from the $0.0041 reference price that Hanyecz established with two pizzas.
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