The man who lost $26bn worth of Bitcoin after the market crashed

Over a decade ago, a man lost the equivalent of $26 billion in Bitcoin after the market crashed. There are some nightmare tales of people having lost or traded their Bitcoin

A man lost out on the equivalent of $26 billion in Bitcoin after a market crash left him unable to withdraw his coins.

The incident occurred on June 19, 2011, when the cryptocurrency market experienced a sudden crash. At the beginning of the day, one Bitcoin was valued at $17.50, but within 20 minutes, the market crashed, leaving Bitcoin valued at one cent.

While many were left in shock at the event, one man, later identified as Kevin Day from Nebraska, saw an opportunity to purchase as many Bitcoins as possible. Day had $3,000 in his crypto wallet from previous trades.

Knowing that people would bid the standard one cent for the Bitcoin, Day decided to bid for the lot at $0.0101 per Bitcoin so that the system would favor his transaction when accepting people's offers.

In total, Day came away with 259,684 Bitcoins, but he quickly realized that the reason for the crash was due to someone hacking the Mt. Gox exchange server for Bitcoin.

The culprit had managed to hack into people's Bitcoin accounts and sell off all their coins.

Day attempted to withdraw all the Bitcoins he had in his account but was unable to do so. Instead, he managed to withdraw 643 Bitcoins, which is the equivalent of $66 million today.

In order to rectify the hack, Mt. Gox decided to roll back all the trades made during the crash.

The exchange erased his trade for the bizarre reason that the server was hacked, but they didn't come after him for the 643 Bitcoins.

As a result, Day lost out on 259,041 Bitcoins at a value in today's market of more than $26 billion.