What is Bitcoin Pizza Day?
UTXOHub · Bitcoin's history
Bitcoin Pizza Day is 22 May. It marks the day in 2010 when Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, one of the first known times bitcoin was used to buy something.
10,000 BTC
The offer
Laszlo Hanyecz had contributed code to Bitcoin. On the Bitcoin forum he posted: “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.” The forum dates the post 00:35 UTC on 18 May 2010, which was still the evening of 17 May in Florida, where he lived; that is why some sources, such as the Bitcoin Wiki, give 17 May. He wanted someone to make the pizza or order it for him, and he would pay them in bitcoin. Three days later he asked: “So nobody wants to buy me pizza?” Asked whether he was hungry or just liked pizza, he replied: “I just think it would be interesting if I could say that I paid for a pizza in bitcoins”.
The deal
On 22 May he posted: “I just want to report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza.” He thanked jercos, a forum user the Bitcoin Wiki names as Jeremy Sturdivant. The wiki says jercos ordered two Papa John's pizzas and received the 10,000 BTC, and that, by his account, they finalised the deal in IRC, an online chat system. The restaurant itself didn't take bitcoin, so the pizzas were paid for in dollars and sent to Laszlo's house, Decrypt reported.
The payment
A blockBlockA batch of transactions added to Bitcoin's shared record, about every 10 minutes on average. is a batch of transactions added to Bitcoin's shared record. The pizza payment went into block 57,043 at 18:16:31 UTC on 22 May 2010, which gave it its first confirmationConfirmationA payment has one confirmation once it's in a block, and one more for each block after. The more it has, the harder it is to reverse., according to mempool.space. It gathered 131 smaller amounts, its inputsInputs and outputsOrdinary payments spend previous outputs as inputs and create new outputs. Coinbase transactions, which create miner rewards, are the exception., worth 10,000.99 BTC, into one output of exactly 10,000 BTC. The other 0.99 BTC was the fee, which went to the minerMinerA computer, or a pool of them, that bundles waiting transactions into blocks and secures the network, paid in new bitcoin and fees. who made the block.
What 10,000 BTC was worth
The 10,000 BTC were worth about $41 at the time of the offer: later that day another member of the thread wrote that they could be sold for “$41USD right now”. In June 2010, in the same forum thread, Laszlo wrote that the two pizzas “are only about 25 dollars total, maybe 30 if you give the guy a nice tip”. He offered to trade 10,000 BTC for two more pizzas “any time as long as I have the funds”. On 22 May 2025, bitcoin reached a record $111,770, by CoinGecko's figures, and Decrypt calculated that 10,000 BTC was then worth over $1.1 billion.
How the day is marked
Since then, 22 May has been known as Bitcoin Pizza Day. The Bitcoin Wiki says pizza sellers around the world offer discounts to bitcoin users to mark it. In February 2018, Laszlo bought two pizzas with bitcoin again, this time over the Lightning NetworkLightning NetworkA network built on Bitcoin for payments through channels, without recording every payment as its own blockchain transaction., a faster way to pay that runs on top of Bitcoin. He paid 0.00649 BTC, about $67, and the payment cost about 6 US cents, Bloomberg reported. “I wanted to show that yes, you still can buy pizzas with Bitcoin,” he said.
References
- Bitcoin Wiki, “Laszlo Hanyecz”.
- Bitcoin Forum, “Pizza for bitcoins?”, 18 May 2010.
- Bitcoin Forum, “Pizza for bitcoins? (Laszlo's report of the trade)”, 22 May 2010.
- Bitcoin Wiki, “Jercos”.
- Decrypt, “Bitcoin Pizza Day, 15 Years Later: Here's How Much Those Pies Are Worth Now”, 22 May 2025.
- mempool.space, “The pizza payment”, 22 May 2010.
- Fortune (Bloomberg), “Crypto Legend Who Bought Pizza With 10,000 Bitcoin Is Back At It”, 26 February 2018.