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Coinbase Mistakenly Told Some Customers They Were Billionaires (mashable.com) 31

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
For a brief moment, their worlds had changed. From a report: On Tuesday afternoon a Coinbase "display issue" changed the balances of an untold number of customers' accounts -- making many of them billionaires in the process. Billionaires on paper, that is, because as Coinbase hastily pointed out in a statement on Twitter, no real trading was affected by the glitch. "We're aware some customers are seeing inflated values for non-tradable crypto assets on Coinbase.com and Coinbase Wallet," read the Coinbase statement acknowledging the error. "This is a display issue only and does not impact trading." But that message came too late for those who saw their inflated accounts and, if even only for a heart-stopping minute, thought they were rich.
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Coinbase Mistakenly Told Some Customers They Were Billionaires More

Coinbase Mistakenly Told Some Customers They Were Billionaires

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  • Well that was fun while it lasted (Score:5, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @03:31PM (#62083773)

    What is the return policy on a Gulfstream?

    • Re:Well that was fun while it lasted (Score:4, Funny)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @03:35PM (#62083787)
      Don't worry, they'll come get it.

    • What is the return policy on a Gulfstream?

      Depends. Do you still have the receipt and original packaging?
      If not, I'm afraid you'll have to accept just a store credit and, of course, there will be a re-stocking fee regardless.

      • What is the return policy on a Gulfstream?

        Depends. Do you still have the receipt and original packaging?

        If not, I'm afraid you'll have to accept just a store credit and, of course, there will be a re-stocking fee regardless.

        The trick is to get a friend who wants to buy a new one and your credit card bill, depending on jurisdiction of course, but in many places it's enough proof of purchase. You can use your friends packaging, once she's sure she doesn't want to return her plane, and use the credit card documents as proof of purchase. Problem solved. Make sure to clean any flights you made from both black boxes and the nav computer though. Everybody remembers the black boxes but the nav computer is a dead giveaway and peopl

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          The trick is to get a friend who wants to buy a new one and your credit card bill, depending on jurisdiction of course, but in many places it's enough proof of purchase. You can use your friends packaging, once she's sure she doesn't want to return her plane, and use the credit card documents as proof of purchase. Problem solved. Make sure to clean any flights you made from both black boxes and the nav computer though. Everybody remembers the black boxes but the nav computer is a dead giveaway and people of

  • "only for a heart-stopping minute" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    But that message came too late for those who saw their inflated accounts and, if even only for a heart-stopping minute, thought they were rich.

    Nah, they've been living that illusion for far longer than that!.

  • I have a small amount of MONA (MonaCoin) and Coinfolio (a phone app) somehow replaced it with MONA (Monavale), making me a crypto "millionaire" on paper.
    It's always funny to show this BS to friends :)

  • It has no intrinsic value. You want to own something that other people actually have a use for. Something they can turn into something more valuable. Here's a relevant quote from the first episode of Yellowstone: "Leverage is knowing that if someone had all the money in the world, this is what they'd buy."

    • It is a currency, an exchangeable token. If you want to say money has no intrinsic value, then nothing has intrinsic value. Cash has no intrinsic value either. People could wake up tomorrow and say they do not want dollars. Is that going to happen? Why would you think it would happen to Bitcoin. By the way if something happens with the US budget or debt, like a default a lot of people especially foreign traders may stop wanting dollars â" so it is not zero plausible. Anyway, if we go by your logic even

      • The US dollar has collateral and clear future value, in the form of 9M km^2 of land and 350M serfs, err citizens. Bitcoin has a whole lot of burned electricity as its collateral.
  • "I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. .... I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail."
  • I saw the foul-up on coinmarketcap yesterday and took a screenshot for a laugh. I will admit I did get a bit excited to see Bitcoin's spot price of $799 billion. :D

  • Sure, why not (Score:3)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @04:51PM (#62084045)
    If my actual bank account suddenly said a billion, it wouldn't be a heart-stopping minute, because wealth doesn't actually appear out of nowhere all the sudden.

    Sure, a bunch of money can be printed and send my 401k way up, but of course, that sends everybody else's up too, and suddenly anything you might want to buy with it one day, like an awesome house in a scenic spot, is hardly more affordable. Anything that suddenly seems to create a bunch of wealth out of nowhere is a mirage.

  • According to morons like Elizabeth Warren you should have to pay taxes on what people think the value of your holdings are.

  • If there is sloppy programming, then eventually they are going to lose your money. Oh look, it has happened [reuters.com].

    Now you know they have sloppy programming practices, and have not changed anything in their processes since they got hacked.

  • Silly (Score:3)

    by ChatHuant ( 801522 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @05:33PM (#62084181)

    Come on, any normal person would realize immediately it's a mistake. Doesn't pretty much everybody know the value of their account, at least to the nearest million?

    • Doesn't pretty much everybody know the value of their account, at least to the nearest million?

      With crypto, how could you know? One moment it can be near 0, then a million bucks the next day.

  • Is what your "Coins" are based in...

    See how easy it is to move a zero?

  • it popped up on my account...for the smallest $ value I hold...which suddenly showed as $2B+_ ...thought about cashing it in, but dismissed the idea. the error disappeared in less than an hour.

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