A resident of Nottingham, UK, briefly held the title of the world’s wealthiest person owing to a glitch with a gift card, as reported by the Daily Mirror newspaper.
Twenty-nine-year-old Sophie Downing received a £10 voucher for a coffee shop for Christmas. However, when attempting to purchase a matcha latte, the checkout system revealed the card’s balance was over £63 quadrillion—a figure followed by fifteen zeros. This sum technically made her roughly 100,000 times richer than Elon Musk, although her “fortune” could only be spent on coffee and pastries.
Downing mentioned that the cashier was equally astonished; a massive figure appeared on his screen that he had never encountered before. The woman initially suspected an error, but the balance remained the same during a subsequent transaction.
The British woman joked that she could have acquired the coffee shop’s entire inventory but chose not to use the card again. She theorizes the malfunction resulted from an issue during barcode scanning or the balance tracking system. Representatives from the coffee chain have not yet contacted her regarding the error.
In early February, Forbes noted that entrepreneur Elon Musk achieved a new historical benchmark, becoming the first individual globally whose net worth surpassed $800 billion.
This sharp increase in capital is linked to a major corporate deal: the aerospace corporation SpaceX acquired one of his other ventures, xAI. This transaction boosted the businessman’s wealth by $84 billion.
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