Let’s say you were Thevamanogari Manivel, a woman from Melbourne, Australia with an interest in cryptography, and you would have used Crypto.com to request a refund of 100 Australian dollars, but instead received $10.5 million (about US$7.2 million) by mistake. Would you like to immediately transfer the funds? Or would you – again, allegedly – go on a buying spree, including buying a five-bedroom house for your sister?

Don’t answer yet!

First, listen to some advice from Hollywood actor Matt Damon, spoken on behalf of the very company you just received a huge salary from:

“Fortune smiles on the brave”, indeed.

Life-changing bargains caused by glitching happen so often in the crypto world, it somehow seems like they’ve become part of the thought process that leads people to invest in decentralized finance in the first place.

For example, in 2017, a crypto wallet service called Parity accidentally gave a single user control of all wallets of some type, which means the user was suddenly able to grab around $300 million in cryptocurrency ether. This User, Who Wasn’t Actually Trying To Perform Some Kind Of Heist In The First Place, Tried To Reverse What He Did In A Panic, But, Instead, Accidentally Locked The Funds Permanently , actually destroying $300 million.

And last year, crypto firm Compound accidentally deposited seemingly random amounts of cryptocurrency in multiple accounts, which in total totaled around $90 million. Immediately after the initial reports, Compound CEO Robert Leshner tried to get all that money back by asking nicely, then threatening to report users to the IRS.

This is just a small sample of what happens when people win the “Accidental Crypto Millionaire Sweepstakes”. And in particular, these are all cases that have become publicly known.

In any case, it seems Manivel did exchange all that crypto she received in May 2021 for regular Australian money, and did spend a lot of it on things like real estate. Then Crypto.com – known as “Foris GFS” to Australian users – took legal action against Manivel last February after discovering his mistake during an audit in December last year. Her bank accounts were frozen and she was forced to sell the house she had given to her sister and give the proceeds to Crypto.com plus interest. All this is according to The Guardian.

But hey, if you listen to Matt Damon, you don’t want to be one of those losers who doesn’t take that big step into the unknown. Better to be one of “those who embrace the moment and engage”. Right, Crypto.com?