The Bored Ape Yacht Club, an in-demand non-fungible token (NFT), has been accidentally sold for a little more than $3,000 (AED11,017), when the limited run of 10,000 pieces of digital art should have been sold for $300,000 (AED1.1 million).
The owner of Bored Ape number 3,547 made a “fat fingered” typing error when listing it for sale online. It was instantly purchased up by an automated account – and put back on sale at nearly $250,000.
The trader, identified only as Max or “maxnaut” online, told CNET that he meant to list his NFT for 75 ether, or about $300,000. But a “lapse of concentration” caused him to accidentally type in 0.75 ether as the listing price.
A fat-finger error is where a trader places the wrong bet on a stock or other financial asset because of a typing mistake.
“I instantly saw the error as my finger clicked the mouse but… it was instantly sniped before I could click ‘Cancel’. And just like that, $250,000 was gone,” Max told CNET.
“The industry is so new, bad things are going to happen whether it’s your fault or the tech. Once you no longer have control of the outcome, forget and move on.”
The suspected-bot buyer also paid very high ‘gas’ fees – which determine how quickly the Ethereum network processes a transaction – of 8 ETH ($32,000), to ensure the sale went through almost instantly.
In traditional banking transactions, such errors are usually reversed easily if the bank facilitating them is told about the mistake quickly. However, in the unregulated crypto-trading market, there is usually no way to reverse such a sale.
The Bored Apes, launched in April 2021, are ‘programmatically generated’ – a computer script mixes and matches an array of colours, designs and accessories to make each of them unique.
Many owners – whether NFT enthusiasts or celebrities – use their apes as a Twitter profile picture. CNBC reported that celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, DJ Khaled and Post Malone have bought Bored Ape NFTs for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
