What You Didn’t Know About Laszlo Hanyecz, the Bitcoin Pizza Day Legend
Laszlo Hanyecz gained fame on May 22, 2010, when he purchased two large Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 BTC, an amount that is now worth over $1 billion. However, Hanyecz's contributions to Bitcoin extend far beyond this transaction. He played a pivotal role in the early development of Bitcoin, creating the first MacOS client and discovering that Bitcoin could be mined using graphics processing units (GPUs). This innovation significantly increased mining efficiency and led to a surge in Bitcoin's total hashrate. Hanyecz's initial mining efforts resulted in the acquisition of approximately 81,432 BTC, which he spent freely during the early days of Bitcoin, leading to an accumulation that today would equate to over $8.6 billion. Although some may see the Pizza Day purchase as a regretful decision, Hanyecz viewed it as a fair exchange for his technical contributions, joking about how he felt he was 'winning the internet' at the time. His story highlights not just a significant purchase in crypto history but also a substantial contribution to the technology that underlies it.
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