This is indeed one of the most dramatic moments in Bitcoin’s early history. It went down in history as the "Value Overflow Incident" ("Value Overflow Incident"), which happened on August 15, 2010. Although Bitcoin technically didn’t "die" then, it faced an existential threat that could have destroyed trust in it forever.
How did 184 billion bitcoins appear?
The problem occurred on block 74,638. Someone noticed a vulnerability in the Bitcoin code related to how the system validated transactions.
The attacker created a transaction that sent 92.2 billion bitcoins to two different addresses (for a total of over 184 billion BTC).
Why did the system allow it? Before confirming a transaction, the Bitcoin code checked whether the output sum did not exceed the input sum. However, because the numbers were astronomically large, an “integer overflow” occurred.
* In programming, when a value exceeds the maximum limit that the data type can hold, it “flips” and becomes negative or a very small number close to zero. Because of this, the system interpreted the enormous output sum as an acceptable value and confirmed the transaction.
How was this glitch resolved?
Solving the problem required a rapid response, and it consisted of several key steps:
1. Fast detection and creation of a patch:
Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin) and developer Gavin Andresen noticed the anomaly almost immediately after the malicious block was mined. Within a few hours, Satoshi wrote a patch for the code and released a new version of the Bitcoin software — Version 0.3.10.
2. Change to the consensus rules
In the new version of the code, a strict rule was added:
The system would automatically reject any transaction whose output value exceeded 21 million bitcoins (the maximum possible issuance). This made it impossible to repeat a similar bug in the future.
3. Hard fork and a “rollback” of history (chain reorganization).
To wipe out the fake 184 billion bitcoins, the network literally had to “forget” the broken block.
* Satoshi urged all miners to update immediately to version 0.3.10.
* Updated miners ignored block 74,638 (where the malicious transaction was) and started building a new chain of blocks, beginning with the previous “clean” block 74,637.
In the blockchain, the rule is: the longest chain is considered the true one. For some time, there were two parallel chains (the old one with a bug and the new one with the fix). Since most honest miners quickly switched to the new version, the “healthy” chain soon surpassed the broken one.
About 53 blocks (approximately 9 hours) were needed for the new chain to become dominant. The broken block was rejected (became a so-called “orphan” block, a block-orphan), and the fake billions disappeared forever from the official Bitcoin history.
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This case (known as CVE-2010-5139) is the only one in Bitcoin history where the blockchain underwent such a deep reorganization due to a critical vulnerability. Instead of “dying,” the network demonstrated its ability to recover quickly thanks to decentralized collaboration among developers and miners.