 "Man becomes multi-quadrillionaire overnight, courtesy PayPal error")
The eternal daydream of the daily struggler is to get their hands on a lamp and wish for billions of dollars to magically appear in their bank accounts. And while that may only be seen in movies, for Chris Reynolds, a 56-year-old public relations executive, that dream become a reality, courtesy PayPal, reports the Philadelphia Daily News.
Last month, when Reynolds checked his PayPal account, the PR man from the US had $140 (Rs 8293) in his account. When he checked it on Saturday, the amount had increased to put it lightly. Reynolds was shocked to see that his account showed $92 quadrillion, or $92,233,720,368,547,800 (Rs 5,463,925,594,632,772,608) to be exact.
Talking about this, Reynolds ruefully said that he was shocked to see “a number with a lot of digits” when he opened his PayPal statement for June. To help keep perspective, the amount of money Reynolds had was equivalent to the US national debt 5,411 times! That was a sobering thought, according to the overnight quadrillionare.
PayPal accidentally makes PR executive an overnight quadrillionaire (Image credit: mirror.uk)
Initially thinking this was a mistake, or even worse a debt that he had to pay off, it was only after he turned to Facebook to talk about the incident that friends pointed out that the statement read “credit” and not “debt”. Pushing Bill Gates and his $72 billion fortune out of the way, Reynolds overnight became the world’s richest man, with a massive 17-digit figure to his name.
But that was where the dream ended. When Reynolds logged into his PayPal account again to double-check the figure, his account balance read $0. The whole thing had just been a glitch which had appeared on his system. PayPal has since reportedly apologised to Reynolds for the error and offered to make a donation to a non-profit organisation of his choice.
Even though the dream was a brief blunder, Reynolds, who works at the PR firm called Reynolds Ink that he co-founded with his wife, says he spent some time thinking about what he would do with $92 quadrillion.
PayPal’s glitch briefly made Chris Reynolds a very very rich man…
Ironically, the first thing that he would have spent on was not a car, building ship or buying a country. “I’d want to pay down the US’ national debt. That’s been really bugging me,” Reynolds was reported saying. And with the “spare change”, Reynolds would have bought a Major League Baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies. The silver lining of the entire incident was the fact that Reynolds was able to reconnect with friends after years when he shared his experience on Facebook. And the news coverage that he is getting after a brief stint as a quadrillionaire is helping as well.
So what would you do with $92 quadrillion? Wipe out the Indian national debt? Find a cure for cancer? Buy a country and reign as the supreme leader?
Cover Image courtesy: Gizmodo
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