
Deutsche Bank Inadvertently Made a $35B Payment in a Single Transaction - el_duderino
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-19/deutsche-bank-flub-said-to-send-35-billion-briefly-out-the-door
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rdlecler1
Rank sort all of your transactions by size. With 100% probability require
double signoff from two senior bankers on all top 5-percentile transactions.

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jgalt212
that's in the 1000s if not 10s of 1000s of transactions a day.

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megaremote
Computers are very fast at sorting even 10s of 1000s of numbers these days!

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derefr
They meant that, at a bank's scale, "the top 5-percentile" requiring human
sign-off would mean 1000s of transactions per day requiring human sign-off.

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makmanalp
Hmm, the interesting bit was why the bear trap didn't catch this one, and
sadly they don't say anything about that ...

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stevesimmons
I once saw a $1b payment error for postage... Each day the supplier's software
mistakenly billed the month-to-date total instead of the new day's work. That
MTD amount therefore doubled each day. And since they were a trusted supplier,
it was automatically paid... The error was only discovered a week later, when
the business's main bank account went $1b overdrawn.

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stevesimmons
Of course, the software bug was found pretty quickly and the release rolled
back.

The funniest part of this story is the next monthly software release
accidentally reinstalled the old buggy code, not the new release. So the
incorrect payments happened again!

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cma
Bitcoin doesn't handle rollbacks for this kind of thing unless both parties
agree.

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josu
Both parties seemed to agree on this one, so it doesn't really matter if they
were bitcoins, euros, unmarked dollars, or cows.

In most transactions there is no need for a third party to get involved, and
if there is, you can always get an escrow. The fact that drug markets, where
you are dealing with criminals, are able to work over crypto should make
people see that there are indeed alternative ways to VISA/Mastercard/Bank
Transfers/PayPal.

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reaperducer
>Both parties seemed to agree on this one, so it doesn't really matter if they
were bitcoins, euros, unmarked dollars, or cows.

Not entirely true. Having been drunk at a livestock auction, I can attest that
unilateral refunds of cows are possible, if you have a big enough truck and
it's late enough at night.

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Shivetya
I know its easy to joke about but this happens at all levels. While the
outcome here did not end up as a bad story it might have been. While the
number here is phenomenal its usually the small numbers that we don't hear
about that cause a lot of harm. Any dealings where money is involved over
trivial amounts needs a series of checks and balances. You would be surprised
at how many professional and hobbyist organizations don't have them. Then
again you may already be nodding your head having read a story where money was
embezzled from a charity or the like.

I do know of a certain pure breed canine group which is out 10k or more
because the treasurer did not verify the received email was from the group
President and paid an invoice which obviously was not a real invoice. If you
are part of a club or non profit always verify your officers claims to
licenses and experience. then still put in the checks and balances, three
people minimum to pay non trivial and more for extra ordinary values. if they
don't agree its probably not a good place to be

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elmar
all this sounds a little fishy, Deutsche Bank as at the moment $60 Trillion
exposure on derivatives, it's a financial bomb ready to explode any time,
wonder if this occurrence is in any way related to the high derivative
exposure.

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twic
What does "$60 Trillion exposure on derivatives" even mean?

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phdp
It’s largely there to sound scary. While stocks can have their exposure
measured based on their face value, derivatives cannot. For example, you could
have a 100 million interest rate swap, where you either pay or receive the
difference between a floating interest rate and a fixed interest rate
depending on their values. You’ll never get close to ever losing or gaining
100 million dollars, and that 100 million is never exchanged, but you still
have that much exposure.

To further complicate things, these banks may have hedged their exposure,
meaning they may have an equal but opposite interest rate swap. Now they have
200 million of exposure, but no matter how the interest rates have changed,
there’s no risk (all of this assumes no counterparty risk, which may or may
not be valid, but for now ignore it).

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velzevur
I accidentally the whole bank

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hyperfekt
What kind of account do you keep $35B dollars in?

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mattnewport
In my company we require a second approval for transfers over $30 billion.

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neals
We used to, but at some point my job just consisted of signing off on trivial
stuff like moonbases and space stations all day.

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Symbiote
About a week after I started university, I received an email along the lines
of "the final payment for the new biomedical engineering building is awaiting
your approval, £80 million to be transferred please".

It turns out I shared the first initial and surname of the financial director
of my university, and the other senior staff hadn't noticed they were emailing
a first year undergraduate. My first name was earlier in the alphabet than
his. (Not my name, but "Graeme" and "Graham" would be equivalent.)

I replied saying I was the wrong person, but the email didn't seem to be
noticed, and I continued receiving emails on the subject. I replied a few more
times over the next week, and eventually received a long and sincere apology
from the rector's secretary, CCd to pretty much the whole of the university's
senior management, saying they needed to take care not to email me ever again.
They didn't.

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dazc
You should have emailed back that you'd negotiated a cash discount.

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p1mrx
> The errant transfer occurred about a week before Easter

What an odd time standard to use in a financial news report.

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lainga
Well, Easter occurs up to a week after a full moon.

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sna1l
Imagine if this took place on the blockchain :)

