Today I heard that someone lost $50 million worth of stablecoins in an address poisoning attack. In the evening, I shared this gossip with friends outside the crypto circle, and they asked an interesting question: Where does this rank in human financial history?

Thinking carefully, if we only consider individual users' irrecoverable losses caused by a single mistake, this guy definitely ranks among the top. There have been reports that the victim sent a strongly worded letter to the hacker—not begging, but threatening to demand a refund—I've never seen such boldness. Whether they can get the funds back is another matter.

But looking further into history, similar tragedies are quite common.

**Last year's WBTC Hacker**

In 2024, a whale experienced a nearly identical address poisoning attack, accidentally sending 1155 WBTC (worth about $71 million at the time) to the hacker. However, this guy was lucky; with the help of security firms and on-chain detectives, the hacker eventually returned most of the funds.

**Japanese Trader’s Slip-up**

This happened back in 2005. A trader at Mizuho Securities intended to sell 1 share of J-Com at "610,000 yen," but accidentally typed "1 yen for 610,000 shares." The company directly lost $225 million. Although nominally this was an institutional loss, essentially it was a personal mistake.

**Permanently Lost Bitcoin**

Everyone's tired of the James Howells story—back in 2013, he accidentally threw away a hard drive containing the private keys to 8,000 bitcoins while tidying up his room, and he’s been battling the landfill ever since.

There’s also Stefan Thomas, a former Ripple CTO, who stored the private keys to 7,002 bitcoins on an encrypted hard drive and then lost the password note. As a result, those funds are permanently locked away.

Looking at these cases, wealthy people really can lose money in the most absurd ways. A slip of the hand, forgetfulness, or a small mistake—millions of dollars just vanish into the universe.