Ordinals trader gets Bitcoin back after fat-fingered NFT purchase

The seller saw the buyer’s X post and decided to buy back the Bitcoin Ordinals NFT for the same amount of Bitcoin.

A Bitcoin Ordinals trader managed to recover their money after making an error purchase of a $13,000 nonfungible token (NFT) on the Bitcoin (BTC) network. 

On March 1, a Bitcoin Ordinals trader shared a post on X about how they made their “biggest mistake” since they started trading Bitcoin-based NFTs. The trader thought they bought an NFT for 0.021 BTC, worth about $1,287. However, the surprise came after the transaction when the trader realized that the NFT was listed at 0.21 BTC (about $12,877).

The trader said they felt embarrassed and sick and that a “lucky person” received a lot of money. According to the NFT trader, they shared the incident to urge others to double-check their digital asset transactions before going through with them.

While the trader accepted the loss, Dan Anderson, the seller of the NFT, saw the X post and promised to return the funds. Anderson highlighted that that was his listing and that he had already made an offer in the marketplace to buy back the NFT with 0.21 BTC. Anderson told the trader to accept the offer and be well again. “I listed it at 0.21 BTC because it’s dank not to fish for a fat finger. I was like ‘huzzah’ tho until I saw your post,” Anderson wrote.

The offer to buy back the NFT has been accepted, and the funds were returned to the trader. At the time of writing, the NFT has been listed in the market once more at 0.21 BTC.

Related: OpenSea collector fat fingers a 100 ETH bid for a free NFT

While the Bitcoin Ordinals trader recovered their funds, not everyone who receives crypto by mistake is eager to return the money. On Feb. 26, court documents showed that the Australian crypto exchange OTCPro accidentally credited a user $653,000 instead of $65,300 because of an error. The exchange claimed the user hasn’t responded to emails, calls, or court appearances since the error came to light.

In 2022, a couple who received $10.5 million from Crypto.com by mistake bought luxury items, including a mansion, instead of returning the money. In September 2023, Thevamanogari Manivel received a sentence of 18 months of community corrections with six months of unpaid community work, while her husband pleaded guilty to a single rolled-up theft charge in December.