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How This Investor Mistakenly Sold His Rock NFT Worth a Million for Virtually Nothing

Andrew Throuvalas Mar 10, 2022 22:11
An EtherRock holder mis-denominated his sale, causing him to lose his entire net worth. 

Remember Ether Rocks – the plain rock jpegs that became incredibly valuable NFTs last year? A lucky owner recently tried to cash in on one of those collectibles – but accidentally sold it for under a cent.

  • Twitter user @dino_dealer (aka Rock Dust) once held EtherRock #44, and planned to sell it for 444 ETH. At today’s price, that’s over $1 million.
  • The idea wasn’t crazy: multiple other ‘worthless’ images within the same collection sold for well over $500,000 last August.
  • However, Dust accidentally fat-fingered its listing, putting it up for 444 Wei rather, instead of ETH.
  • Wei is the smallest denomination of ETH that can be traded. Exactly 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Wei is equal to just 1 ETH. In other words, the 444 Wei the rock was listed for is worth orders of magnitude less than a penny.
  • Dust had little chance to reverse the listing either: a trading bot nabbed the free NFT within the same block.
  • Dust said that his entire net worth was placed in the digital rock, and asked those who sniped it to “show mercy”.
  • This isn’t the first time an NFT holder butchered his own sale: in December, one BAYC holder sold his ape for $3 rather than $300,000. Since crypto transactions are peer to peer and irreversible, such accidents are virtually impossible to remedy.
  • Dust agreed that his accident was somewhat of an “easy come, easy go” scenario, which caused him to not carefully double-check his sale before making it.
  • “The controls are the same whether transacting $1 or $1 billion,” he said. “It’s just a line of data and a click of a button.”

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Andrew Throuvalas

Andrew is content writer with a passion for Bitcoin. He became familiar with Bitcoin back in 2013, but began diligently studying the blockchain technology and its economic implications in 2017. Ever since, he’s believed in the network’s power to replace the current global monetary system, and provide financial freedom to billions worldwide. Contact: Medium | LinkedIn | Twitter