The $345 Million Dollar Pizza
Lessons on missed wins and the most expensive pizza in history
In 2010 a developer named Laszlo Hanyecz became the first person to pay with Bitcoin in a commercial transaction. He paid 10,000 BTC (at the time worth $0.0041 a coin) to buy 2 Papa John’s pizzas. At it’s peak in November of 2021, Bitcoin would rise to just shy of $69,000 a coin. This means Hanyecz’s 10,000 Bitcoins would have been worth a staggering $690 million! To be fair though, he did get 2 pizzas, so that equates to $345 million a pie. Let’s hope it was the most delicious pizza ever experienced on this planet.
Hanyecz was an early adopter in the crypto ecosystem (in fact, he claims to have even messaged Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto a few times). He remained in the ecosystem and was an early Bitcoin miner, so fortunately he probably still made out very well through Bitcoin in the big scheme of things.
Still, it got me thinking about how painful it would be to look back on such a huge missed opportunity. I think we all have those moments we look back on and wonder, “What if?” I’m sure almost all of us have those near wins that still haunt us.
Here are a few examples of huge-scale bad beats that will hopefully make you feel better about your missed opportunities.
