US resident Christopher Williamson woke up one fine morning to discover that he had become the world’s first trillionaire, thanks to his crypto investment. His trading account on Coinbase on June 16 showed a balance of $1,309,245,148,628.7.
However, the happiness was short-lived when the nursing student realised that the trillion balance shown on his Coinbase account was a ‘technical error.’ Williamson had invested $20 (around Rs 1,400) in RocketBunny cryptocurrency just a few days ago. He has been dabbling in cryptocurrencies since the last eight months.
RocketBunny cryptocurrency was last quoting a price of $0.000000000036 (12 decimal points after zero), but it gained 9 percent on June 23 — thanks to Williamson’s enthusiasm — after declining 76 per cent in 22 days in June.
Williamson told Fox 5 news network that he literally fell out of his bed when he saw the figure on his phone and initially thought that he was still sleeping before verifying the ‘trillion balance’ again.
Williamson tweeted that he needed someone to explain to him what was going on. He also said he needed to write a cheque and that he got a mega yacht shaped like a penguin on standby.
The Georgia student even tweeted to billionaire Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX CEO, seeking advice on his newfound fortune. Williamson contacted Coinbase after trying to move the currency into another wallet to withdraw it, but it wasn’t displaying the same price. And his Coinbase trading account got blocked.
Coinbase’s official Twitter account responded two days later. “Sorry — the penguin yacht may have to wait — our team is aware of the display error causing this wishful thinking for some ERC20s. They’re working to fix — in the meantime, trading the asset will reflect its current market value.”
Coinbase, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, (@coinbase, @CoinbaseSupport) created many memes on Williamson’s ‘trillionaire’ days such as, “I now understand how @BillMurray was truly feeling in the movie Groundhog Day. I’m gonna need that emotional support penguin now. Penguin #stopmessingwithmeporkchop.
Day 4 as a Trillionaire… @coinbase @CoinbaseSupport – I now understand how @BillMurray was truly feeling in the movie Groundhog Day. I’m gonna need that emotional support penguin now. 🐧 #stopmessingwithmeporkchop pic.twitter.com/Ivjr1x6cpL
— Christopher Williamson (@Christo44044658) June 19, 2021
RocketBunny, a new entrant in the world of cryptocurrency, has a unique proposition promising to be a deflationary token with a maximum supply of 777 quadrillion.
The RocketBunny currency has each transaction incurring a 4 percent tax that is distributed in four equal parts: 1 percent each to holders, to The Rabbit’s Hole, as locked liquidity, and as a bonus to liquidity providers. As volume increases, the amount spent increases logarithmically, eventually leading to an exponential decrease in supply.
Despite numerous pleas to both Coinbase and RocketBunny, Williamson’s problem of a trillion plus balance ($173 trillion as of June 21) in his trading account could not be sorted and his account is frozen. Williamson said he would have helped people if he had really got a trillion, like open a free clinic and help in paying off his sister’s home loan.