The two Papa John’s pizzas that programmer Laszlo Hanyecz ordered in 2010 for 10,000 Bitcoin now cost Laszlo more than $978 million at the current market price.
The two Papa John’s pizzas that programmer Laszlo Hanyecz ordered in 2010 for 10,000 BTC have become notorious in the crypto community. Those two pizzas cost Laszlo more than $978 million at the current market price.
Hanyecz described the event, which is widely considered to be the first commercial BTC transaction in history, in a 2019 interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes:
“I Just posted on the Forum. I said, ‘You know, if anybody’s interested, I’m offering 10,000 Bitcoin in exchange for some pizza.’ Somebody there said, ‘Hey, I’ll take you up on that offer,’ so I sent him the 10,000 Bitcoin. He paid with his credit card, and the pizza showed up at my door.”
As the price of Bitcoin continues to increase each cycle, Hanyecz’s costly error has become a perennial cliché in the crypto community, frequently growing by an order of magnitude or more.
Bitcoin Pizza Day’s increasing worth
The BTC community refers to the May 22, 2010 acquisition of Papa John’s as “Pizza Day.”
Hanyecz’s expenditure of 10,000 BTC for the pizzas, which was only $41 in 2010, was estimated to be worth approximately $4.4 million on May 22, 2016.
On Pizza Day 2018, two years later, the total value of the 10,000 BTC increased to approximately $41 million, representing a gain of roughly 10 times since 2016.
The price of Bitcoin attained new heights in 2020, and the 10,000 BTC had an opportunity cost of over $80 million. The opportunity cost of Pizza Day 2022 increased by an order of magnitude to exceed $300 million.
The 2023 bear market marked the first instance in which this trend was reversed, resulting in a decrease in the total value of 10,000 BTC to approximately $268 million.
The opportunity cost of the 10,000 BTC may approach $2 billion around Pizza Day 2025, as industry executives and analysts predict a $180,000 Bitcoin price target by 2025.
