🧨 Bitcoin Bug of 2010: When the System Created 184 Million BTC
On August 15, 2010, a critical failure occurred in the Bitcoin network, known as the “Value Overflow Incident.” Due to a bug in the code, over 184 million BTC were created in block #74,638 — nine times the maximum number of bitcoins that should exist.
This anomaly arose because the code did not account for the possibility of value overflow when adding large numbers. As a result, two addresses received 92.2 million BTC each, while a miner received 0.01 BTC, which did not exist before this transaction.
Fortunately, Satoshi Nakamoto and other developers identified the problem and released an update within 5 hours that fixed the bug. The network was forked, and the erroneous block was removed from the main chain.
This incident highlights how important security and vigilance are in the development of blockchain systems.