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Whatever Happened To The Bitcoin Pizza Guy
By NADEEM SARWAR
In 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer and early Bitcoin miner better known as "the Bitcoin pizza guy," spent 10,000 bitcoins on a couple of Papa John's cheese-loaded calorie bombs — a remarkable achievement now celebrated every May 22 as “Bitcoin Pizza Day.” So, whatever happened to Hanyecz?
Although Haynecz has faded from public view on the internet, his name pops up almost religiously every year around Bitcoin Pizza Day. His last interaction with a reliable outlet was an interview with CoinDesk, which mentioned that he was employed by a company named GORUCK that makes rucking gear and also happens to accept bitcoin as a form of payment.
Hanyecz appears to have a Twitter account where he is soliciting Bitcoin donations now that he's "poor," but the last tweet from the account is dated 2018. Hanyecz is more than just someone who squandered a crypto fortune, however, he’s also credited with devising the system for mining cryptocurrency using the added firepower of a computer's GPU.
Based on Bitcoin's market cap as of May 16, 2022, Hanyecz's pizza cost him over $300 million. When asked about the toll it took on him during the popular 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, Hanyecz remarked that reminiscing about losing hundreds of millions over pizzas was "not really good" for him.