How much have you ever lost on a typo? Probably not hundreds of thousands of dollars. But thatâs just what happened to one unlucky individual this weekend, who accidentally sold a Bored Ape NFT for $3,000 instead of $300,000 â all because of a misplaced decimal point.
As firstreported byCNET,the NFTâs owner Max (or maxnaut) listed the NFT for sale on Saturday. Max, who describes himself as a âsolo-traveller, bored ape, marketing agency owner & NFT investor,â had meant to price the NFT at 75 ether (around $300,000) but accidentally typed0.75 etherinstead (roughly $3,000). Before they could correct the mistake, the NFT had been snapped up, apparently by a bot programmed to find and buy undervalued listings. You can see the drama play outon the NFTâs OpenSea page.
âHowâd it happen? A lapse of concentration I guess.â
âHowâd it happen? A lapse of concentration I guess,â Max toldCNET. âI list a lot of items every day and just wasnât paying attention properly. I instantly saw the error as my finger clicked the mouse but a bot sent a transaction with over 8 eth [$34,000] of gas fees so it was instantly sniped before I could click cancel, and just like that, $250k was gone.â
These sorts of so-called âfat-finger errorsâ arewell-known in the world of finance. In 2015, for example, a junior Deutsche Bank employeeaccidentally sent $6 billionto a hedge fund client after messing up their calculations. But traditional markets generally have some means of recourse when the worst happens â whether legal in nature or stemming from social pressure. In the case of Deutsche Bank, it seems the hedge fund simply sent the money back the next day.
For Max, thereâs no way to get his cash back. It doesnât help that the NFT he sold belongs to a particularly valuable collection. There are 10,000 Bored Apes in existence, each mixing and matching certain attributes (laser eyes, sunglasses, etc.) to create a portrait with the aesthetic qualities of a mid-2000s gamer avatar. NFTs arenât about the quality of the artwork, though: theyâre about speculation and perceived value. And Bored Ape NFTs are an exclusive club, with owners including celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Steph Curry. They originally sold for 0.08 ether, around $320, but now cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Despite the loss, Max seems to be taking things in stride. âSometimes you fuck up, make a bad buy, out of gas fail, send Eth to the wrong wallet or fat finger a listing,â hetweeted. âItâs going to happen. But, letting it occupy your mind for even one second after you can no longer affect the outcome is purely hurting yourself twice.â
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/13/22832146/bored-ape-nft-accidentally-sold-300000-fat-finger