The Priciest Pizzas on the Planet

On May 18, 2010, a man named Laszlo Hanyecz got a hankering for pizza. Logging on to BitcoinTalk.org, he made a post offering 10,000 BTC for a couple of pizzas, "...what I'm aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don't have to order or prepare it myself".

At the time, Bitcoin was just over a year old and worth less than $0.01, so 10,000 BTC for a couple of pizzas sounded like a pretty good deal. Three days later, on May 22, Hanyecz checked back in to report his success - 10,000 BTC for two Papa John's pizzas. He even posted pictures and wrote that his one-year-old daughter loved the pizza.

While Hanyecz became the first person to transact with BTC for a physical good, the purchase was an expensive one. If you factor in today's BTC prices, instead of two pizzas he could have bought the pizza company. Read the original post and follow-ups here!

The Guy Who Sent Half a Billion Dollars to the Dump

Three years after the Bitcoin pizza incident in 2013, a welsh BTC miner named James Howells had a laptop that suddenly went on the fritz. Sometime later, Howells didn't think much when he put the old computer in the trash during some spring cleaning. However, Mr. Howells didn't realize that the hard drive on that laptop stored the long-forgotten private keys to 7,500 BTC that were obtained in 2009 for next to nothing.

Even in 2013, this was a major loss as the price of BTC reached $1,000 per coin, meaning that even at the time, Howells was out $7.5 million. If you consider today's prices, he could have been one of the wealthiest people on the planet.

Eight years later, Howells has still not given up on his lost bitcoins. In January 2021, he offered his city $70 million to excavate the landfill where his hard drive is buried. Sadly, the city council rejected his offer citing environmental hazards.

While I'm sure Howells is still kicking himself for this blunder, he is not alone in his misfortune. It has been reported that nearly 20% of all bitcoins are forever lost.

A Few Hundred Million Reasons Why You Should Keep Track of Your Seed Phrase

We love Bitcoin because it gives us the freedom to be our bank and make financial decisions for ourselves. The fact that many of us have increased our net worth in some way doesn't hurt either. However, being your own bank comes with a great responsibility to keep your funds safe - this means not accidentally tossing your BTC like Mr. Howells as well as keeping your passwords stored in a safe in a secure location - unlike our next bitcoin blunderer.

You may have seen the headlines about the guy who can't remember the password to the hard drive that stores 7,002 BTC, worth close to half a billion dollars. That guy is Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer an entrepreneur.

In 2011, Thomas was given 7,002 bitcoins for making a video explaining how Bitcoin works. Around the same time, he lost the digital keys to his wallet, which were kept in a file on his hard drive. He tried eight of his usual password combinations without luck. Unfortunately, his hard drive will wipe clean if he fails ten times. For years he has been racking his brain to figure out how to get into that hard drive, and he has just two more chances to guess it right.

The Time Several Billion Dollars Disappeared

Now onto the most severe blunder on our list. In 2013, Mt. Gox was the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, handling around 70% of the world's Bitcoin transactions. Then, in 2014 the exchange abruptly shut down its website, suspended trading, and filed for bankruptcy.

What was behind this sudden shutdown? 850,000 missing bitcoins. Mt. Gox announced that these bitcoins belonging to customers and the company had likely been stolen - worth around $450 million at the time and tens of billions of dollars today. While around 140,000 BTC have since been recovered, many people lost a lot of money due to Mt. Gox's poor management over their website's code. An investigation into the incident in 2015 found that these bitcoins were stolen over a period of time dating back to 2011.

While extremely unfortunate, this event goes to show the importance of not leaving your precious coins in an exchange-hosted wallet. For maximum security, keep your crypto in a non-custodial wallet like the CoinFlip Wallet - but don't lose your passwords either!

The Company That Accidentally Gave Away Millions

BlockFi, the large crypto lending and trading platform, accidentally sent out millions in bitcoin during a promotional event. The promo was meant to reward users in USD stablecoins, but the company accidentally paid out BTC instead. Some users received 700 BTC, worth about $28 million at the time.

BlockFi realized their mistake pretty quickly, but not before around 100 users withdrew the erroneous coins. BlockFi has threatened legal action to those withdrawing the BTC, which many have already returned.

While this situation has undoubtedly been a big mess for the crypto company, they have assured users that customer funds are safe and sound.

Lessons Learned

While these bitcoin blunders are a bit extreme, they do offer a few good teaching moments. Of course, Laszlo Hanyecz could not predict the future when he made his BTC pizza swap, but I'm sure he takes some pride in being the first person in history to make a purchase using cryptocurrency. The other accidents, which collectively cost more than the GDP of some small countries, could have been avoided by practicing a few crypto basics: treat your passphrase like a prized possession, watch out for exchanges that hold assets on your behalf, and double-check before pressing "send" on any transaction.