Thirteen years is a long time in crypto, but the story of Jeremy Sturdivant and Bitcoin Pizza Day still hits different when you do the math on what could have been.

Back in May 2010, a 19-year-old Californian named Sturdivant—known in the Bitcoin community as Jercos—was scrolling through the Bitcointalk forum when he noticed something interesting. A user named Laszlo Hanyecz had posted an offer: 10,000 BTC to anyone willing to order him two large pizzas and have them delivered to his place in Jacksonville, Florida. The request seemed straightforward enough. Laszlo wasn't picky about toppings—onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, pepperoni were all welcome, but honestly, even a basic cheese pizza would do.

Here's the thing: nobody was taking the bait. For four days, the offer sat there while people complained about the logistics of ordering pizza across state lines and the hassle of setting up payment. Some even questioned whether the offer was too low.

That's when Sturdivant decided to step in. He picked up the phone, called a Papa John's location, and arranged for two pizzas to be shipped across the country to Laszlo. He paid with his debit card, confirmed the transaction with Laszlo, and received 10,000 BTC in his wallet.

At the time, 10,000 bitcoins were worth about $41. Nobody thought twice about it. Sturdivant certainly didn't imagine he'd be fielding regret-filled questions about this transaction for the next decade.

Now, if those 10,000 BTC had stayed in his wallet until today, we'd be talking about a net worth in the hundreds of millions. With Bitcoin currently trading around $67,580, those pizzas would have cost him roughly $675 million. That's the kind of number that makes you physically uncomfortable when you think about it too long.

But Sturdivant didn't hold. Almost immediately after receiving the Bitcoin, he sold the entire stack to fund a trip to the United States with his girlfriend. When asked about it years later in an interview with The Telegraph, he explained his thinking with the kind of casual honesty that only someone living through early Bitcoin could pull off: "It seemed fair to both parties and, well, who doesn't like pizza? Even after fees, it might be possible to convert the 10,000 BTC back to the original cost, and I didn't see bitcoin as likely to collapse completely, although I had no idea how big it would become."

Looking back, he admits he "certainly" regrets the quick sale. But here's what's interesting about his perspective—he wasn't treating it as an investment at the time. He was just helping out a fellow bitcoiner who wanted pizza. "If I had treated it as an investment, I might have held on a bit longer, but surely I would have sold at a lower price, perhaps at the now famous 1 BTC = $1 mark? With full knowledge of the future, I would have acted differently, but that could be said of anyone," he reflected in 2018.

What really seems to get to him isn't just the money he left on the table. It's the fact that those 10,000 BTC represented something bigger—proof that Bitcoin had actual utility. This wasn't some theoretical exercise in cryptography anymore. It was a dude buying pizza with digital money. That transaction, small as it seemed at the time, became the foundation for what would eventually be known as Bitcoin Pizza Day.

Every May 22, the crypto community celebrates this moment. It's become a holiday of sorts, a reminder of when people first realized that Bitcoin wasn't just code running on the computers of enthusiasts—it was money that could actually buy things in the real world.

Sturdivant has made peace with his decision in his own way. He's proud to have been part of something that went from "an interesting conceptual project to a global phenomenon so quickly." He sees the broader mission of cryptocurrency as what matters: empowering individuals and businesses to trade across borders in a fair and traceable way. That's worth more to him than dwelling on the opportunity cost.

Laszlo Hanyecz, the guy who actually spent 10,000 BTC on the pizzas, has adopted a similar mindset. He's said in interviews that he tries not to think about the astronomical value those coins would have today. "I try not to think about it. Firstly, because there's no point, and secondly, it would just drive me crazy thinking about it," he told The Telegraph. "I mined that Bitcoin and at the time it was like I was getting free food. It wasn't worth much at the time. I wouldn't have spent $100 million on pizza, right? But if I hadn't done that, maybe Bitcoin wouldn't have become so popular."

That last part is the real insight. The question isn't just about Jeremy Sturdivant's net worth if he'd held or what Laszlo's decision cost him in hindsight. It's whether those transactions were necessary for Bitcoin to gain mainstream credibility. Early adoption requires people willing to actually use the technology, not just hoard it. Every transaction, no matter how small or how regrettable in retrospect, contributed to proving that Bitcoin worked.

So yeah, if Sturdivant had held those 10,000 BTC to today, he'd be sitting on a fortune that would make most people's head spin. But the trade-off he made—helping bootstrap one of the most important moments in crypto history—might actually be worth more than any individual net worth calculation can capture. At least, that's what he's chosen to believe.