The most expensive lunch in history: Why do we celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day? 🍕🚀

Imagine spending hundreds of millions of dollars on two family-sized pizzas. It sounds like complete madness, but in the world of financial technology, this event is no joke, but rather one of the most legendary and important milestones of our era.

Every 22 May, the global crypto community raises a slice of pizza to commemorate Bitcoin Pizza Day. But what exactly happened that day, and why did a simple fast-food transaction change for ever the way we understand money?

The experiment of the 10,000 Bitcoins

To understand the origin of this date, we must travel back to 2010. Back then, Bitcoin was barely an experimental project, a piece of software code discussed by a small group of cryptographers and enthusiasts on internet forums. It had no real market value, there were no exchanges or financial applications like those of today, and nobody accepted it as a method of payment.

That was when Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer from Florida, decided to carry out an experiment to test whether this "internet money" was useful for anything in the physical world.

On 18 May 2010, Laszlo posted a message on the Bitcointalk forum offering 10,000 BTC to anyone who could get him a pair of pizzas. A few days later, on 22 May, a young man named Jeremy Sturdivant accepted the deal. Sturdivant bought two pizzas with his credit card and arranged for them to be delivered to Laszlo's house in exchange for the 10,000 Bitcoins.

The numbers: 2010 vs. 2026 🤯

At the time Laszlo received his pizzas at the door of his house, those 10,000 BTC were worth approximately just $41. It seemed like a fair exchange and a fun anecdote among internet users.

However, if we do the calculation in 2026, the perspective is astonishing. At the current market price of around $78,000 per BTC, those same 10,000 Bitcoins are worth roughly $780 million.

To put it into perspective:

• In 2010: 10,000 BTC bought exactly 2 pizzas.
• In 2026: At the current average price, those same 10,000 BTC would be enough to buy more than 40 million pizzas, enough to feed the entire population of El Salvador several times over.

Why do we celebrate what looks like "a bad deal"?

At first glance, Laszlo might seem like the man with the worst financial luck in history for having eaten a fortune. But in the ecosystem, he is not remembered with mockery, but as an absolute pioneer.

We celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day because it was the first time in history that a decentralised digital asset was used as a medium of exchange to acquire a physical good in the real world. That day, the technology proved that it could function as money.

That transaction validated the main thesis of the new economy: we did not need a traditional intermediary, or a bank, to transfer value and acquire goods. The system worked from person to person.

From history to action: Lama Pizza Week 2026

At Lama, we operate under the same conviction that drove Laszlo on that 22 May: money was not designed to stay still. Whether fiat or digital, capital was born to be used, to move without friction, and to give you freedom in the real world.

To honour this historic date and demonstrate that true technological innovation generates tangible impact in the local economy, we are proud to announce Lama Pizza Week 2026.

From 22 to 31 May, we are celebrating in a big way in El Salvador. We have teamed up with some of the country's best artisanal pizzerias to treat the new members of our ecosystem to a pizza. Through this initiative, Lama is funding the purchase of hundreds of pizzas in local businesses so that our users can experience the fluidity of our infrastructure.

That first pizza purchase in 2010 opened the door to the financial future. Today, we invite you to walk through it with us. The money of the future is already here, do not leave it in the oven.

To see the list of participating establishments in El Salvador and the detailed instructions for redeeming your code, keep an eye on our official social media channels and consult the Terms and Conditions.