Whoops: $1 Million Valued Clipart Rock NFT Sells for Less Than a Cent

Mistakes are made in the cryptocurrency world, some of which incur a high price. This time, we’re talking about the owner of an NFT who erroneously listed his EtherRock for 444 wei instead of 444 ETH.

The NFT in question is a rock JPEG previously owned by a trader with the Twitter handle of Dino Dealer. The rock was supposed to be listed at 444 ETH, or roughly US$1.2 million, but Dino made the mistake of listing it in wei, the smallest denomination of ETH (1 ETH = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 wei):

Sniper Bot Snaps Up Rock

The NFT was quickly snapped up for less than a cent by a sniper bot. Bots are becoming increasingly popular in NFT listings, as buyers can use them for last-second bidding on auction items, such as on decentralised marketplace OpenSea. There’s a freelance website called Upwork that offers sniper bots for US$200, along with other sniping tools.

A desperate Dino even tried to reach out to “crypto customer service” asking if there was a way to retrieve the rock. As expected, this request was met with jokes from users handing out emails and WhatsApp numbers to Dino. Of course, no one should ever follow up on those dubious numbers or emails:

To Err is Human, You Could Say

Given the immutable nature of the blockchain, it’s highly unlikely Dino will get his rock back unless the new owner of the NFT sympathises with him – also extremely unlikely.

We have seen various examples of costly mistakes such as this, although one might wonder how it could be possible to confuse wei with ETH. One such rookie error led to the sale of a Bored Ape NFT for US$3,000 instead of its intended market price of $300,000.

Another painful example was a mutant ape that sold for 17 USDC instead of 17 ETH – somehow the owner confused both currencies. Keep in mind the owner paid a fee of 2.87 ETH, or US$9,100 at that time.