Day 1157
Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day to those who celebrate!
On this day in 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz, a Jacksonville, Florida based programmer, made history by spending 10,000 BTC on two pizzas. It wasn’t a stunt, he genuinely wanted to see if someone would trade real food for this strange new internet money.
That moment, to my knowledge, is the first recorded Bitcoin transaction for something tangible. It helped prove early on that Bitcoin could function as a medium of exchange.
But Laszlo’s contributions didn’t stop at pizza. He also wrote the code that let Apple users run Bitcoin, back when it only worked on Windows. And he was the first to mine Bitcoin with GPUs — so effectively that Satoshi himself chimed in and politely asked Laszlo to slow it down a bit, not because he could make him, but because he wanted others still mining on CPUs to have a fair shot at earning coins. Satoshi knew better hardware was inevitable, but hoped the transition could be gradual.
I learned all this from The Book of Satoshi by Phil Champagne, highly recommended if you’re curious about Bitcoin’s early days.
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So today, we salute Laszlo. Not just for buying pizza with Bitcoin, but for helping prove it was possible.
Lazlo didn’t just trade Bitcoin for pizza, he helped feed a peaceful revolution.
I really need to step back and just take a moment to thank through how lucky I am to be alive at this time. To be here for Bitcoin monetizing itself for the first time. God is good.
Gratitude.
5/22/25
Conor Jay Chepenik
