Jeremy Sturdivant, the 19 year old who received 10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas in May 2010, spent almost all of it long before BTC crossed even $1, let alone today’s five figure levels.
Summary
- In 2010, 10,000 BTC was worth about $40 to $41 and bought two Papa Johns pizzas for Laszlo Hanyecz in Jacksonville.
- Sturdivant later said he spent the coins on travel and goods as Bitcoin’s price climbed from fractions of a cent to under $1.
- At Bitcoin’s November 2021 peak near $69,000, that same 10,000 BTC would have been worth around $690 million.
Jeremy Sturdivant, known as “jercos” on the Bitcointalk forum, was the counterparty to Laszlo Hanyecz’s now legendary 10,000 BTC pizza purchase on May 22, 2010.
How did Jeremy Sturdivant end up with 10,000 BTC for pizza?
The deal that turned into Bitcoin Pizza Day began on the Bitcointalk forum on May 18, 2010, when Florida programmer Laszlo Hanyecz offered 10,000 BTC to anyone willing to get him “a couple of pizzas” delivered to his home.
Four days later Hanyecz posted, “I just want to report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza. Thanks jercos!” confirming that forum user Jeremy “jercos” Sturdivant had stepped in, paid for two large Papa Johns pizzas with his credit card, and received 10,000 BTC in return.
At the time, those 10,000 BTC were valued at roughly $40 to $41, while the pizzas themselves cost less than $50, underscoring how informal and experimental the trade really was.
Crypto traders now commemorate that transaction every May 22 as Bitcoin Pizza Day, a tradition crypto.news highlighted in a 15th anniversary feature looking back at how both Hanyecz and Sturdivant view the deal years later.
What did Sturdivant do with the 10,000 BTC and where is he now?
Sturdivant did not become a Bitcoin billionaire because he never held the coins for long.
In a 2016 interview titled “A Living Currency: An Interview With ‘Jercos’,” he explained that he treated the 10,000 BTC as spending money and cycled it back into the small Bitcoin economy as its price crept up, saying he used the windfall on goods and travel rather than hoarding it.
That posture fit his broader view of Bitcoin at the time. In the same interview he argued that Bitcoin only made sense as something used, not idolized, saying he wanted to see it behave as “a living currency” rather than a speculative trophy locked away forever.
The contrast with the asset’s later trajectory is stark. By the 2021 bull market peak, the original 10,000 BTC would have been worth about $690 million at roughly $69,000 per coin, while more recent rallies have pushed Bitcoin above $76,000 with a market capitalization over $1.5 trillion.
Crypto historians have since noted that Hanyecz went on to spend tens of thousands more BTC on pizzas that year, while Sturdivant’s role receded as he moved on with his life away from the spotlight, resurfacing mainly in retrospective pieces about Bitcoin Pizza Day.
Crypto.news has revisited the episode repeatedly in coverage of Bitcoin Pizza Day, including reporting on how the community uses the anniversary to reflect on price discovery, early adoption, and the tension between using Bitcoin as money versus treating it as a long term store of value.
One recent explainer on Bitcoin’s evolution from novelty payment method to major asset also situates the pizza trade as a key moment in its price discovery history and links it to later phases where BTC broke above $100, $1,000, and eventually five figure territory.
As of today there is no evidence that Sturdivant accumulated a significant new stash of BTC after spending the original 10,000 coins, which means the teenager who once held what would later be hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin cashed out of his position long before the asset reached those levels.
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