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The Pizzas That Are Now Worth $80 million: Laszlo, Papa John’s, and Regrets

Bitcoiners celebrate the 22nd of May as Bitcoin Pizza Day all over the world. This day marks the world’s most expensive fast food transaction made by Laszlo Hanyecz. It was back in 2010 that Hanyecz, now popularly known as the Pizza Guy, paid 10,000 bitcoins for two Papa John’s pizzas. It was also the first real-world purchase made with bitcoins. The pizzas were worth $ 25, and 10,000 bitcoins were worth $ 41 at that time, so it was not a very big deal. However, comparing it with the present-day value, 10,000 bitcoins are worth $80 million.

Laszlo was a programmer based in Florida. He created a program for bitcoin miners to mine bitcoins using computer graphic cards or GPUs. He earned bitcoins through the same bitcoin mining process. On 18th May 2010, he posted on bitcointalk forum that he wanted to exchange 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas. He wrote, “I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe two large ones, so I have some leftover for the next day.” He further mentioned that anyone could make pizzas themselves and get them delivered to his place or order them from a restaurant.

His offer was taken up by a British man named Jecos, who got the pizzas delivered from Papa John’s and took 10,000 bitcoins in return. This pizza order has been given the title of ‘the most expensive lunch in the world’. 

How to Buy Pizza with Bitcoins?

Bitcoiners wanting to buy pizzas with bitcoins on ‘Bitcoin Pizza Day‘ has been a tradition going on for ten years. There are different ways and methods to purchase pizzas with bitcoins in different places:

  • In Germany, you can order pizzas from Lieferando, an online takeaway giant. It features a BitPay extension to allow customers to pay for piping- hot pizzas in bitcoins.
  • If you want to pay for pizzas with bitcoin in the US, you can buy gift cards for pizza chains like Papa John’s and Dominos and others from Bitcoin.com Store. You can redeem these gift cards at the pizza place of your choice.
  • Another option for people of the United States is by using the services of ‘Lightening Pizza’. It lets you buy pizzas from Dominos by allowing fast bitcoin micropayments. All you have to do is to order your pizza on the website.
  • In Seoul, South Kores, the Shuttle Delivery allows the users to order food from over 200 restaurants and pay in bitcoin cash.
  • In Europe, you can select an option to buy food using bitcoin cash through Takeaway.com. This is a company headquartered in Amsterdam and has local branches in many European countries. It operates several food delivery websites as well as apps accepting payments in bitcoins.

If you wish to exchange your bitcoins for pizzas, then there is no need to wait anymore. Follow any of the above ways and enjoy your pizzas!

More interestingly, Laszlo Hanyecz’s loss on the pizzas was not the only instance of such gut-wrenching losses. Howell, a British engineer, once threw away the hard disk, which had the private key for 7,500 bitcoins. This hard disk was taken from the trash can and buried in the local trash landfill. As per the present-day value of bitcoins, the loss was a loss of around $ 200 million.

A lot of people think about Hanyecz’s loss, but it doesn’t feel like that to the man himself. Talking about the pizza deal famous all over the world, Hanyecz said to the New York Times, “It wasn’t like Bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool.” He further mentioned that though bitcoins were interesting, nobody was using them, so it does not matter if he has them all. Apart from this, If you want to buy Bitcoin to make good money from it, then Bitcoin Code is the perfect platform for you. You can find out Bitcoin Code Reviews by crypto experts to get in-depth knowledge about it.

Jason Bailey: Jason Bailey is a financial journalist of EverCoinNews team and he is a strong believer of blockchain technology primarily because of how it reshaping the world economy and benefits of cryptocurrencies. He curates content for upcoming news stories of blockchain world and fintech industry. In his free time, he loves to explore new places and connect with influential people of crypto space.