On May 22, 2010, a legend of cryptocurrency was born.
Jeremy Sturvidant, a 19-year-old student in California, made $41 million worth of Bitcoin by innocuously selling a couple of large pizzas to a computer programmer by the name of Laszlo Hanyecz.
To this day, the purchase of these pizzas with Bitcoin is widely recognized as the first-ever real-world crypto transaction.
And the hilarious part of this story is that buying pizza with Bitcoin was the norm for Hanyecz who reportedly spent over 100,000 Bitcoin or $3.7 billion on his favorite takeaway.
As for Sturdivant, he went on to use his Bitcoin earnings to go traveling. Although, he too didn’t realize the wealth in his hands and it wasn’t long before all of his Bitcoin was gone.
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Laszlo Hanyecz has no regrets
If Laszlo Hanyecz had held onto his Bitcoin for a few more years and then sold it, he would now probably be on a beach somewhere, sipping cocktails, relaxing at a 7-star hotel and never having to work another day in his life.
However, apparently, Hanyecz has no regrets about what happened more than ten years ago. In an interview a few years ago, Hanyecz simply stated that “Bitcoin is a way to harness greed.”
The developer does have a point when you realize that the value and market cap of Bitcoin are dependent on money-hungry individuals pumping their finances into the cryptocurrency.
If no one invests in Bitcoin, Bitcoin becomes completely irrelevant. Or in Hanyecz’s words, “If nobody’s using it, it doesn’t matter if I have it all.”
In any case, Bitcoin is still part of Hanyecz’s life to this day. As a developer for GORUCK, an e-commerce company that accepts Bitcoin, he continues to see the volatility of crypto-based transactions.
Was Hanyecz right?
At the time of writing, the crypto economy is not back to its best and Hanyecz might have had a point.
Bitcoin currently has a price of $25,900.80, over 50% less than its all-time high of $68,789.63 in 2021. Ethereum is at $1,634.81, a far cry away from its peak value per coin of $4,627.09.
Even Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, is struggling at $0.0623 and is a million miles away from its all-time high of $0.5374.
Not to mention, the total global cryptocurrency market cap is $1.09 trillion, considerably less than $3 million a couple of years ago.
Indeed, is it a coincidence that fewer people investing in crypto is leading to lower prices for the so-called top dogs such as Bitcoin and Ethereum? Or is it the plummeting of prices that is prompting people to stop investing in cryptocurrency?
Well, as the crypto economy has shown throughout its history, periods of decline are eventually followed by periods of financial prosperity. Similar to real estate and the economy in the real world.
Hence, as long as there is still the potential to make a huge return, it is still worth investing in cryptocurrency.
After all, lower prices for coins mean slightly less risky investments, which means more profit in the future if the cryptocurrencies you have invested in, skyrocket in value.
Then again, Hanyecz is definitely right about one thing – don’t get greedy. For the most part, the amount of money you can earn from cryptocurrency is limitless. So if you are always chasing more, you are more likely to lose everything and go broke.
Hanyecz didn’t say it in his interview but he would have said something along the lines of “only invest disposable income that you can afford and cash out once you have made a life-changing return”.
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The lasting effect of Hanyecz’s pizza purchase with Bitcoin
On the surface, Hanyecz is the victim of poor decision-making and the loss of generational wealth. Nevertheless, his action of choosing to buy pizza with Bitcoin might be having an adverse effect on the crypto economy until this day due to GPU shortage.
Hanyecz is partly to blame for the panic in the GPU market and astronomical prices because those who mine cryptocurrency depend on graphic cards to create a variety of cryptocurrencies.
It’s no secret that Hanyecz exchanged notes about the underlying software with the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nagatomo.
In the book, Digital Gold, author Nathaniel Popper claims that Nagatomo sent an email to Hanyecz expressing his dissatisfaction with a GPU-fueled system for the mining of Bitcoin.
Nagatomo believed that a GPU-powered system would give an edge to those who could purchase pricey graphic cards. And weirdly, there is a Twitter account that exists for Hanyecz, soliciting Bitcoin donations until the final tweet was posted in 2018.
As a matter of opinion, Hanyecz’s innovation arguably made it harder for gamers to purchase new graphic cards. Therefore, competition is stiff alongside cryptocurrency miners and scalpers.
In a nutshell, what seemed like an innocent purchase of pizza with Bitcoin is now showing repercussions in the modern world. Not everyone can afford high-end graphic cards and for that reason, some developers will always be playing catch up.
The moral of the pizza-Bitcoin story
Despite occurring all the way back in 2010, this famous story with Jeremy Sturvidant and Laszlo Hanyecz epitomizes the crypto industry.
For a start, it shows the financial potential of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. All it takes is one right investment to change your life forever. You could literally invest $100 into a coin and wake up the next day as a millionaire.
Obviously, in 2010, cryptocurrency was not the well-known industry it is now. If someone told you back then that a digital currency called Bitcoin would go on to have a value per coin of more than $68,000, you would think they were crazy.
However, on the flip side, Sturvidant and Hanyecz also show us the importance of education in the crypto realm.
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On one hand, you have Hanyecz who wasn’t aware of the financial prosperity he had in his hands. He may claim he has no regrets yet if he knew about the potential earnings from Bitcoin, it’s unlikely he would have used the cryptocurrency to buy pizza.
Then you have Sturvidant who had one of the most lucky transactions of all time. He too was completely oblivious to what fortune came his way by ordering pizza in exchange for Bitcoin.
Yes, Sturvidant became a millionaire from his Bitcoin holdings, but after his travel expenses, he was back to square one.
Therefore, even if you do luck out in the crypto market, you need to know what to do next to avoid wasting your earnings. Whether that’s living within your means or investing in other things to keep the income flowing.
The beauty of the crypto world is there are so many ways to make a healthy return. Investing and then withdrawing your earnings is the basic way.
But you can also win crypto by playing online games like Axie Infinity or stake your hold and gain passive income like with Shiba Inu’s staking system.
Thankfully, we’re at a point where there is so much information about crypto. Don’t be like Sturvidant or Hanyecz. Realize the financial potential of crypto and come away full-handed by following tutorials and the best practices from experts.
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