He spent 10,000 bitcoins on two pizzas — the most expensive meal in history

On May 22, 2010, a Florida programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz posted an offer on a bitcoin forum: he would pay 10,000 bitcoins to anyone who would order and deliver two pizzas to him. Another user took him up on it, ordering two Papa John's pizzas for Hanyecz in exchange for the 10,000 BTC. It was the first known commercial transaction using bitcoin — the first time the brand-new cryptocurrency had been used to buy something in the real world.

At the time, bitcoin was barely a year old and worth only fractions of a cent; 10,000 of them were essentially worthless, and the pizzas cost on the order of $25 to $40. The trade was a milestone, not a blunder — it proved that bitcoin could function as money. The date is now celebrated by crypto enthusiasts as 'Bitcoin Pizza Day.'

The reason the story is still told is what happened next. Bitcoin's price rose, slowly at first and then spectacularly, reaching tens of thousands of dollars per coin. The 10,000 BTC Hanyecz spent on two pizzas became worth, at various peaks, hundreds of millions of dollars — making it, by hindsight, the most expensive meal in history. Hanyecz has said he has no regrets; the pizzas were the point. But the tale is now the canonical illustration of opportunity cost and of how hard it is to value something whose worth the world hasn't yet agreed on.