From Pizza to Legend — 16th Anniversary of Pizza Day Celebrates Bitcoin's First Physical Transaction

2026 has arrived, and sixteen years have passed since that historic transaction that changed the course of cryptocurrency history. When people today talk about Bitcoin’s value recognition, they often can’t avoid mentioning a classic story: a software engineer used 10,000 Bitcoins to buy 2 pizzas. Today, Bitcoin’s price has soared to $90,160, and that Pizza Day transaction has long become an eternal legend.

The Story of a Historic Pizza Day Transaction

Let’s go back to May 18, 2010. American software engineer Laszlo Hanyecz posted a bold idea on an online forum. He openly stated he was willing to exchange 10,000 Bitcoins for a pizza delivery service, aiming to verify whether Bitcoin could really be used for everyday transactions. At the time, no one paid much attention.

Shortly after Hanyecz’s post, an internet user calculated that 10,000 Bitcoins were worth about $41, while the market price for 2 pizzas was around $25. On the surface, this transaction didn’t seem profitable for Hanyecz. But he insisted that this was not just a matter of economics; it was a crucial experiment regarding Bitcoin’s practicality.

Surprisingly, no one responded to this proposal immediately. Hanyecz even questioned on May 21—could it be that 10,000 Bitcoins were too little? Just when everyone thought this story would fade away, on the evening of May 22, a user named Jercos finally agreed. He accepted the 10,000 Bitcoins and ordered and delivered 2 pizzas to Hanyecz. At that moment, Bitcoin made a historic leap from a virtual asset to a real-world transaction tool, and Pizza Day was born.

The Deep Significance of Pizza Day After Sixteen Years of Appreciation

Someone once lamented on Reddit that Jercos later sold those 10,000 Bitcoins at a very low price, missing out on incredible appreciation opportunities. But as the crypto community often says: “Circulation gives value.” If Laszlo Hanyecz hadn’t made that seemingly crazy decision back then, and if no one had actually used Bitcoin to buy real-world goods, Bitcoin might be nothing today—just a string of useless digital codes.

From $0.0041 (10,000 Bitcoins worth $41) in May 2010 to today’s $90,160, Bitcoin’s appreciation is hard to describe with numbers. Although short-term fluctuations are inevitable (currently up 0.34% in the past 24 hours), looking at the long-term trend over sixteen years, this Pizza Day transaction has become the most symbolic milestone—it proves Bitcoin’s transformation from nothing to something, from theory to practice.

Pizza Day is not just a commemoration of a transaction; it is a celebration of the moment when Bitcoin first became a currency in the real world, when a decentralized asset was first used to exchange daily necessities, and when a new economic order was first practiced by people themselves. Today, every May 22, the entire crypto community revisits this story, reminding themselves not to forget Bitcoin’s original dream—to become a globally freely circulating currency.