Crypto exchange accidentally sends user $35 million on $127 withdrawalsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #crypto6 years ago

Brazilian crypto exchange has major "oops" moment.

According to recent reports, Brazilian crypto exchange Bitcambio accidentally sent one of its users roughly $35 million when the user was trying to withdraw roughly $127.

Before you start falling all over yourself to start withdrawing funds from every crypto exchange under the sun, the transfer was ultimately cancelled and the user did not get to keep the $35 million.

Dang!

More about it can be seen here:

https://www.ccn.com/brazilian-crypto-exchange-mistakenly-sends-user-35-million-on-127-withdrawal/

So, what happened?

According to the user, Kaique Nunes, he issued some normal withdrawal orders just like he normally does.

Then shortly after he started getting phone calls from the exchange.

They were telling him that his withdraws were accidentally for much more money than was intended and that he needed to come down to their office in order to fully cancel the transaction.

Nunes, thinking these calls were fake, didn't immediately comply.

However, the calls kept coming and eventually Nunes, through some research on his own, was able to verify that these phone calls were likely legitimate.

Oops!

Apparently the exchange was able to cancel the order, but it was not able to completely cancel the order due to the size of the withdrawal without the owner of the account, Nunes, signing some papers to verify the transaction was an accident.

The exchange said that an automated process was to blame for the mistake.

Nunes eventually complied and the matter was solved.

He even received a bit of compensation for his time and cooperation.

So, the next time $35 million accidentally shows up in your account, don't get too excited because you will likely have to return it. :)

Stay informed my friends.

Image Source:

https://www.chepicap.com/en/news/5784/brazilian-btc-exchange-sends-35-million-for-127-withdrawal.html

Follow me: @jrcornel

Sort:  

Pick me Pick me! 💰💰💰💰💰

You and me both!

I would have give them the finger....I hate exchanges. take the money, do some time and thats it

I am pretty sure it wouldn't be quite that easy. Governments and courts have a way of getting what they think is owed.

and I would have settled for just 1 million, imagine that (-:

Ha, you and me both. I don't think it ever actually hit his account, looks like they caught it pretty quick but needed is signature before it could be fully reversed.

Exchanges like this are the ones that claim to use smart contracts for commercial purposes but don't use them in reality, in an era where everything will be automated such errors can be easily be avoided by the use of smart contracts to prevent such scenarios

Posted using Partiko iOS

Yea it wasn't entire clear how or why it happened. Just something to do with an automated process they were using.

Maybe it was simple case of integer underflow... You put negative number and it wraps to positive number due to some systems silently ignoring sign bit instead of returning an error... I was once asked in our own system why one exchange got really big number returned when they tried to send an transaction... I had to calculate the binary version of the number on paper because the number was too big for my computer to understand... when I finally got the number converted to binary, it was really long stream of 1's... essentially part of the code returned -1 but it couldn't show it as that part of the system wasn't designed to print negative numbers.

Could be. The news article didn't really elaborate what happened exactly. Just that it was an automated process gone awry.

As a developer and software designer myself, I can guess what could have been the cause. It's very common to just write minimal verification for user input to reduce complexity of the code in favor of getting fastest possible execution speed.

I don't know a thing about programming, guess we learn new things every day.

Posted using Partiko iOS

I've been a programmer for 35 years and I still learn new things every day...

To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.

Definitely the right thing to do.
It wasn’t the lottery and it wasn’t his.
Good lesson.
Keep on postin

Posted using Partiko iOS

Yep, though I don't think he actually ever had it in his account.

or move into a privacy coin and disappear... Crazy situation but have seen it very closely... I recall an employee getting a $3m deposit for payroll by mistake!

Yep though I think in this case they caught it before it ever actually showed up in his account. They just needed his signature before they could fully reverse the transaction. What happened with the payroll mistake?

yeah, but why were they so desperate to get him sign the papers? i think if he didn't want to sign the papers they had to give him the money....and then drag him to the court. Why aren't this kind of things happens to me???

Correct. If he wouldn't have signed then the transaction would not have been able to be reversed. However the transaction would likely remain in limbo, and once the courts got involved I am sure they would have forced him to give it back.

The smart move would have been for him to not sign unless they sweetened the pot just a little for his "emotional distress" during the whole ordeal. :)

Sure thing, first send me a bitcoin though.