On May 22, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz ordered two pizzas and paid 10,000 BTC — about $41 at the time. That day got immortalized as "Bitcoin Pizza Day," and it's been the opening line of every Bitcoin price history ever since.

Those same 10,000 BTC today? Over $1 billion as of 2026. The most expensive pizzas any human has ever eaten, full stop.

Bitcoin Price Milestones

Stretch the price curve out flat and "rollercoaster" stops being a metaphor.

2009 — Satoshi Nakamoto launches Bitcoin. Price ≈ $0
2010 — First traded at $0.003. Pizza Day clocks in at $0.004/BTC
2011 — Breaks $1, rockets to $31, then craters back to $2
2013 — First $1,000. The Cyprus banking crisis lit the fuse
2017 — $20,000. ICO mania, and suddenly your uncle is asking about it
2018 — Crashes to $3,200. "Bitcoin is dead" declared for the 350th time
2020 — Institutions show up post-COVID. Year-end: $29,000
2021 — All-time high of $69,000. El Salvador makes it legal tender
2022 — FTX collapses, price falls to $16,000. The crypto winter
2024 — Bitcoin ETF approved. Breaks $100,000
2025–2026 — Bouncing somewhere between $80,000 and $120,000

Why Does It Swing So Hard?

There are a few real reasons the moves are this violent.

1. Halvings
Roughly every four years, mining rewards get cut in half. Less new supply, more upward pressure. And sure enough, a big bull run trailed every halving — 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024.

2. Institutional adoption
Starting in 2020, companies like Tesla and MicroStrategy began stacking Bitcoin. Then the 2024 ETF approval threw open Wall Street's floodgates.

3. Regulation and events
China's mining ban (2021) and FTX's collapse (2022) sent it straight down. ETF approval and El Salvador's adoption sent it straight back up.

"$10 on a 2010 Basis" — Value on Record

Run the math backward at $0.003/BTC. In 2010, $10 would've gotten you roughly 3,333 BTC on the record.

At $100,000/BTC in 2026, that's $333 million on paper. Ten dollars into a third of a billion — one of the wildest returns in human history. But don't read that number alone: this same stretch includes 50%-plus crashes, five times over. The record comes welded to extreme volatility, and the two don't separate.

Honestly, almost nobody held the whole way through. Whether you'd sold at 100x or 1,000x, the hardest part — to me, anyway — is simply not selling. It's a record of how brutal "just hold" really is.

Bitcoin vs. Gold vs. S&P 500 — 10-Year Record

Line up 2016 through 2026 side by side:

Bitcoin — $400 → $100,000 = ~250x (~70% annually)
Gold — $1,150 → $3,000 = ~2.6x (~10% annually)
S&P 500 — 2,000 → 6,000 = ~3x (~12% annually)

On raw numbers, the other two can't even get in the room with Bitcoin. But over that same window it took 50%-plus drawdowns more than five times. You won't find a cleaner illustration that high reward and high risk travel together.

Curious how good your Bitcoin price sense actually is? Take a swing at today's price challenge.