Citigroup credits account with $81tn instead of $280 | Hacker News Reader

Citigroup credits account with $81tn instead of $280

ft.com

37 pointsnprateem19 comments

If you're in the mood for other hilarious Citibank fuckups, the Australian Capital Territory Court of Appeal's decision in Stergiou v Citibank Savings Ltd [2005] ACTCA 15 is very much worth a read.

https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/act/ACTCA/20...

This was really hilarious! And this last judgement has all of the comical history from the beginning!

Would have been super funny (!) if Citi lets people directly purchase BitCoin from their accounts, and the person had then decided to purchase all of the BitCoin in existence (so far) before the transaction was reversed. :D

Argentina could have fixed its economy overnight. ;)

I'm not an expert. But they probably would not be able to buy 81t of bitcoin.

Maybe 1m? Depending on who they were and what bank they use

Dunno. I'd assume it'd have to be done in quite a few transactions, but if they'd magically had an automated system ready to do just that then 81t gives quite a lot of headroom for even a rapidly increasing price. :D

All current bitcoin in current existence is max $2 to $3 trillion USD. I don't think we consider all currency on the planet to equal $81 trillion USD or even half that.

No money left the accounts of Citigroup, occurred in April 2024 and was considered one of 10 $1b+ "near miss" incidents during last year, down from 13 during 2023.

The old accidentally putting the account number in the amount field.

The fact that this was overlooked by multiple people looking at the transaction is the scary part.

Apparently not, the article notes that the amount field cam prepopulated with 15 zeros.

Then shouldn't $280 became $280\times 10^15 = $280000\times 10^12 = $280000tn dollars? Why $81tn ? Even if the currency is Brazil real, it should evaluate to about 48,000 trillion USD.

But was it overlooked though? We are looking at it

> The series of near misses at Citi highlights how the Wall Street bank is struggling to repair its operational troubles nearly five years after it mistakenly sent $900mn to creditors engaged in a contentious battle over the debt of cosmetics group Revlon

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222045 - Citibank's $900M Blunder (2020-08-20, 296 comments)

https://archive.ph/L2LAY

I dont understand how it one could credit $81T when it is even more than the entire market cap of US stock market.

These are just database update transactions. The money only has to have come from somewhere when the bank's books are balanced.

Thank You.

if it has a apy of a few percent wouldn't they make millions in interest in a day off the mistake and be able to keep it/

Lol why would they be able to keep the interest but not the money?

I mean the 1% only have skill in government lobbying and increasing the wealth that they hoard; they're otherwise quite inept. So makes sense I suppose.

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