Another blunder in Japan’s digital currency trading: Will $20 trillion worth of Bitcoin be given away for free?

Following the previous theft, a Japanese digital currency exchange made another mistake, with about $20 trillion worth of Bitcoin being given away for free.

According to ZeroHedge, Asahi Shimbun and Reuters, Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif said on the 20th that the incident occurred between 5:40 and 5:58 p.m. on February 16. The Zaif price calculation system failed, and seven customers bought a large number of bitcoins without spending a penny. One of them even bought 2200 trillion yen, equivalent to about 20 trillion U.S. dollars in bitcoins, hoping to cash out immediately.

The news of the massive sale of bitcoins spread across the Internet immediately. The problem was that the total value of bitcoins in circulation was only $187 billion, and bitcoins worth $20 trillion did not exist at all. Zaif found out that something was wrong and corrected the error at 7:34 p.m. that day and canceled the transaction. However, a famous customer tried to transfer the free bitcoins out of the exchange, and negotiations are still ongoing.

There are 16 cryptocurrency exchanges registered with the Japanese government, including Zaif. After the news of the incident, the prices of all cryptocurrencies fell. Bitcoin also stopped its five-day rally, falling as much as 12% at one point.

Just last month, Japan reported a theft of virtual currency. On January 26, Coincheck announced that 58 billion yen, or about 530 million U.S. dollars, worth of new virtual currency NEM was stolen, making it the largest virtual currency theft in history.

Most digital currencies showed a downward trend during the day, and Bitcoin continued to hover around the 11,000 mark: