10 years ago someone did a transfer of 184 Million Bitcoins --- Shouldn't there be only 21 Million of them?

By Permabull | Permabull | 14 Aug 2020


Exactly 10 Years ago someone found a bug in bitcoin code that allowed him to transfer 184 Million Bitcoins to 3 different addresses.

 

On August 15 2010, it was discovered that block 74638 contained a transaction that created 184,467,440,737.09551616 bitcoins for three different addresses.[1][2][3] Two addresses received 92.2 billion bitcoins each, and whoever solved the block got an extra 0.01 BTC that did not exist prior to the transaction. This was possible because the code used for checking transactions before including them in a block didn't account for the case of outputs so large that they overflowed when summed.[4]

A new version of the client was published within five hours of the discovery that contained a soft forking change to the consensus rules that rejected output value overflow transactions (as well as any transaction that paid more than 21 million bitcoins in an output for any reason).[5] The block chain was forked. Although many unpatched nodes continued to build on the "bad" block chain, the "good" block chain overtook it at a block height of 74691[6] at which point all nodes accepted the "good" blockchain as the authoritative source of Bitcoin transaction history.

The bad transaction no longer exists for people using the longest chain. Therefore, the bitcoins created by it do not exist either. While the transaction does not exist any more, the 0.5 BTC that was consumed by it does. It appears to have come from a faucet and has not been used since.[7]

source : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Value_overflow_incident

 

Incredible read, had to share it with all of you.

 

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Permabull
Permabull

Saw crypto as a way to make some cash, a get rich quick scheme. Learned about the tech and will stay in forever. Watching the GOV spending in 2020 made me realise how fiat is controlled way too much and becoming worthless be a minute. Bitcoin for the WIN!


Permabull
Permabull

Born to be bull.

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