Bitcoin Pizza Guy: Laszlo Hanyecz on Why Bitcoin is Still the Only Flavor of Crypto for Him

You may think that you have never heard of Laszlo Hanyecz, a Florida-based programmer working for online retail company GoRuck, but you'd probably be wrong - Hanyecz was behind the inspirational purchase of two pizzas from Papa John's for 10,000 Bitcoin back on May 22, 2010, making this week a celebration of Pizza Day's eight year anniversary.

The transaction did not involve only one person: Jeremy Sturdivant, also known as Jercos, participated in the original Bitcoin pizza deal as the recipient of those 10,000 BTC that he turned into two pizzas.

Ever since the fateful first-ever recorded transaction of Bitcoin for a physical good, the use case for the currency has taken off, with customers now able to use Bitcoin for real estate deals, online shopping, airplane bookings and, of course, pizza.

Cointelegraph got the chance to speak to both Laszlo and Jeremy this week about their views on Bitcoin, how they feel about the legacy of the "Bitcoin Pizza" and their favorite type of pizza.

I think that it's great that I got to be part of the early history of Bitcoin in that way, and people know about the pizza and it's an interesting story because everybody can kind of relate to that and be [like] - "Oh my God, you spent all of that money!" I was also kind of giving people tech support on the forums and I ported Bitcoin to MacOS, and you know, some other things - fix bugs and whatnot, and I've always kind of just wanted people to use Bitcoin and buying the pizza was one way to do that.

CT: Do you think that your original Bitcoin pizza purchase directly influenced the fact that you can now buy pizza and other food with Bitcoin?

LH: If everybody wanted to pay for pizza with Bitcoin right now - it wouldn't work - they would try it, they'd realize that their transactions aren't confirming, and they'd lose interest.

My kids are fairly young, I can't really explain market forces and things like that to them yet, but they understand that more is good, and Bitcoin is good, and that I'm involved with Bitcoin somehow.

"I've never seen Bitcoin as an investment, and while it's easy to look back and say 'I could have been a millionaire,' I think it's more important to look at the mindset I had during the pizza transaction, not being that of acquiring an investment, but of making use of a form of currency. If I was looking to hoard coins, I very likely wouldn't have been in the right place at the right time."

Sturdivant also noted that he's also continued to buy and sell pizza in cryptocurrency using Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum, and that he prefers pizza with meat and red onions, although "For a little controversy, I like 'Hawaiian' pizza quite a lot."