Bitcoin Pizza Day: The Father of GPU Mining and How to Become a BTC Millionaire

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May 22 is the famous Bitcoin Pizza Day. To encourage everyone to buy pizza to celebrate, from today until May 22, as long as you upload a receipt of buying pizza during this period or a photo of the pizza, Blocktrend will later gift you BTC equivalent to 100 Taiwan dollars! This activity is limited to members, and free readers who subscribe for a fee to become Blocktrend members are welcome.

This article discusses the origins of Bitcoin Pizza Day and how to become a BTC millionaire?

Pizza Day

Bitcoin Pizza Day is a story about a "fool" who spent 10,000 BTC for 2 pizzas in 2010. Today, these two pizzas have not only become the most expensive pizzas in history, but the day this fool successfully bought pizzas has also become an important holiday celebrated by the global cryptocurrency community. This is not schadenfreude, but a significant milestone in the history of Bitcoin's development.

Rewinding back to May 18, 2010, the Bitcoin system had been online for over a year, and sporadic BTC transactions were beginning to appear on the internet. But people were still confused about the specific use of BTC. Just like every time I give cryptocurrency to participants in a seminar, there will be someone raising their hand and asking, "Where can these cryptocurrencies be used?"

The protagonist of Bitcoin Pizza Day, Laszlo Hanyecz, got involved with Bitcoin relatively early and had a very experimental spirit. He posted a price code of 10,000 BTC on the Bitcoin discussion forum Bitcointalk, asking if anyone was willing to exchange it for 2 large pizzas:

I'll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day.  I like having left over pizza to nibble on later.  You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I'm aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don't have to order or prepare it myself, kind of like ordering a 'breakfast platter' at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you're happy!

I like things like onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, pepperoni, etc.. just standard stuff no weird fish topping or anything like that.  I also like regular cheese pizzas which may be cheaper to prepare or otherwise acquire. If you're interested please let me know and we can work out a deal.

Now everyone knows that it's foolish to exchange 10,000 BTC for 2 large pizzas, but Laszlo Hanyecz was “too dumb". At the time, someone kindly reminded Laszlo on the forum that he could go to the bitcoinmarket website to sell the 10,000 BTC for 41 dollars, and then it would be more cost-effective to buy pizza. Surprisingly, Laszlo was "stubborn," insisting on exchanging the 10,000 BTC for pizza. He even thought about adding more, fearing that the price he offered was too low.

People were curious as to why Laszlo insisted on selling BTC at a loss, was he really hungry or just enjoyed buying pizza? He simply said that he thought it would be interesting if he could buy pizza with BTC. Four days after the post, a 19-year-old netizen named Jeremy Sturdivant completed the transaction online and successfully obtained 10,000 BTC. Laszlo, who was 28 years old at the time, also happily shared pictures on the internet of him enjoying the pizza with his one-year-old daughter.

Actually, these 10,000 BTC were just part of Laszlo's pizza transactions. He revealed that he spent a total of 100,000 BTC on pizzas in 2010. Not only that, but Laszlo also gave BTC to netizens on the Bitcointalk forum. Sometimes he gave 100 BTC, sometimes 1,000 BTC. For Laszlo, the BTC at that time was like "play money" in the game of Monopoly, giving it to others was more joyful than keeping it for himself.

This inevitably makes one wonder why Laszlo had so many BTC to squander? This has to do with his other identity. Laszlo was not only an early Bitcoin miner but also the "Father of GPU Mining" in the cryptocurrency world. Even Satoshi Nakamoto once wrote him a letter "scolding" him for it.

Father of GPU Mining

Now, individual participation in Bitcoin mining is no longer profitable, as the "low hanging fruit" has all been picked. In the era when Laszlo entered the crypto world, anyone could participate in Bitcoin mining with a home computer as long as they overcame technical barriers. Although the financial threshold for mining was low at that time and there was little competition, Bitcoin was not valuable. Even participating in mining with a computer was considered a waste of resources, let alone considering how to improve mining efficiency.

Laszlo was a peculiar person. As a software engineer, he not only became one of the earliest Bitcoin miners but also discovered that using the GPU in computer graphics cards for mining was more efficient and could mine more Bitcoin in a day. Back then, most people used the computer's CPU for mining. The CPU is good at handling complex tasks, but it has to do them one by one. The characteristics of the GPU are the opposite. The GPU is good at parallel processing of many tasks, but each task cannot be too complex.

After discovering that the GPU was more suitable for Bitcoin mining than the CPU, Laszlo also shared the mining software and instruction files with netizens for free, helping everyone to "prosper together". Originally, Laszlo could only mine about 1 block per day with the CPU, receiving a block reward of 50 BTC. But since switching to GPU mining, he could mine 1 to 2 blocks per hour. It was precisely because Laszlo's mining efficiency was higher than others that he had so many BTC to give to netizens or use to buy pizza.

At the time, Laszlo even wrote a letter to Satoshi Nakamoto, sharing his new idea of GPU mining. Unexpectedly, he was "scolded" by Nakamoto in the reply, saying that this would raise the mining threshold and limit everyone's opportunity to access Bitcoin:

A big attraction to new users is that anyone with a computer can generate some free coins. When there are 5000 users, that incentive may fade, but for now it's still true. GPUs would prematurely limit the incentive to only those with high end GPU hardware. It's inevitable that GPU compute clusters will eventually hog all the generated coins, but I don't want to hasten that day.

Actually, even if Laszlo hadn't started mining with a GPU, others would have done so.

Later, Bitcoin mining transitioned not only from CPU to GPU. As the price of BTC rose higher and higher, it became profitable to design a computer specifically for mining (mining machine), supporting an entire mining industry chain. From hardware specifications, machine management, to the cost of water and electricity, everything has become professional. Nowadays, mining is a game for capitalists, and ordinary people can only buy Bitcoin from them.

But this is not a bad thing. Going back to the story of Bitcoin Pizza Day, the person who is probably most envied is not Laszlo, who mined with a GPU, but the young netizen, Jeremy, who got 10,000 BTC for just 2 large pizzas. He, like you and me, exchanged his work income for BTC.

In the past few years, the media has found Jeremy for interviews, asking about the whereabouts of those 10,000 BTC. The result, of course, was that he sold all the BTC!

Becoming a BTC Millionaire

According to an interview with The Telegraph in 2018:

Jercos, who was 19 at the time of the transaction, admits that not saving the bitcoin was “certainly” a regret today, but says at the time he was simply “facilitating a purchase”. … “The bitcoin went into a wallet that was later liquidated to cover expenses while travelling the US with my girlfriend at the time,” he explains. “If you were to treat it like an investment, the net profit was in excess of 1000%... which is to say it didn't make me particularly rich.

In another interview, Jeremy said that he sold those 10,000 BTC for $400. If the value of 2 pizzas was less than $40 at the time, $400 is exactly a 10 times profit. Looking back, it's inevitable to feel absurd that these people lacked investment foresight! But remember, even if Jeremy didn't spend these BTC, he might not have been able to keep them till now.

Jeremy admitted that if he had seen this batch of BTC as an investment at that time, he would definitely have held it for longer. But probably not past the legendary Bitcoin milestone — "1 BTC = 1 USD". This is like many people fantasizing today that if the price of 1 BTC exceeds $100,000, they will quit their jobs, buy houses or travel around the world. At that time, people's desire was 1 BTC = 1 USD, and then they went to realize their dreams. Not only did Jeremy clear out Bitcoin, but so did Laszlo. He sold all his BTC when BTC was close to 1 dollar, netting $4,000.

Almost certainly, if you have ever thought about selling when the coin price rises to a certain level, perhaps you will be lucky to sell at the high point and be happy for a while, but this also means that you are unlikely to be a BTC millionaire years later. Some people will say: "But I would buy more back at the low point, right?"

If someone is really that good, then they still have to pass the subsequent tests. In 2013, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, collapsed. If the BTC you bought back at the time was not in your own wallet, but in the world's largest exchange, then you would regret not spending it earlier. Or at least, you would realize the wisdom of enjoying the moment. After all, at that time, no one was advocating "Not your key, not your coin", and wallets were not as intuitive and easy to use as they are now.

Assuming you were lucky enough to keep your coins in a personal wallet, not an exchange, you would still have to avoid the Ponzi schemes of cryptocurrencies. Just like the ICO frenzy a few years ago, projects always depict a beautiful vision to attract you to invest with BTC. If you feel that holding Bitcoin is not enough and want to invest in some cryptocurrency companies, then part of your assets might be swindled away. You would regret once again that it would have been more real to spend earlier.

To be able to dodge all the obstacles, you are either exceptionally wise or you completely forgot about it until many years later when you suddenly remembered. The former is probably a minority of the minority, and if it's the latter, you might want to be careful not to forget something more important than BTC 😂

When Laszlo and Jeremy completed the pizza transaction in 2010, they probably didn't envision themselves becoming famous for it. At that time, nobody was celebrating Bitcoin Pizza Day. It wasn't until 2013, when 1 BTC had risen to $600, that a story published by The New York Times brought attention to this piece of history - buying pizzas for $6 million. Now, those two large pizzas have a market value of $270 million, making them the most expensive pizzas in the world. Assuming no unforeseen circumstances, they will only become more expensive in the future.

The reason Bitcoin Pizza Day is worth commemorating is not just to celebrate the first time BTC was used to purchase something, resolving a common doubt about BTC held by countless people over the years. More importantly, it embodies the spirit of sharing and experimentation inherent in the Bitcoin pizza story — If everyone had chosen to hold onto their BTC back then, dreaming of becoming a BTC millionaire one day, there might be no one today who knows what Bitcoin is. It's precisely because they spent and gave away BTC that more people got the chance to come into contact with it.

Merely saving money without spending it does not make one wealthy. Those who can spend more BTC are the true BTC millionaires.

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