Overstock's flaw could have brought huge profits to customers

Overstock, a major online retailer, said in a statement on January 9 that the company is aware of a glitch in its payment system that allows customers who simultaneously pay for purchases in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to receive a huge discount.

This software glitch was first reported by KrebsOnSecurity's founder Brian Krebs. According to him, he bought solar-powered lights from Overstock worth $78.27 and paid for them using bitcoin cash. The glitch in the trading platform is that it converts both cryptocurrencies at the Bitcoin rate. Brian paid only $12.02 for these lights, after which he requested a refund and received a transfer to his wallet in the amount of $77.88. 

Overstock wrote the following on their blog: “We are aware of an issue that may occur for some users who make purchases on our site using certain cryptocurrencies and an issue with refunds, which was recently written about by an independent researcher [Krebs]. We are temporarily removing the ability to pay using this method until Coinbase sorts out the problems.”

Coinbase, in turn, believes that the error was made by Overstock, but the companies worked together "We understand that a small number of users were experiencing this issue. Immediately after we were notified of the issue, Overstock and Coinbase collaborated to resolve the issue."

Krebs said Overstock allowed him to keep the “profits” he made from discovering the issue. He later donated the money to a non-profit library. According to Coinbase, this failure lasted exactly three weeks.

Overstock did not announce how many products and how much were paid for with such “discounts”. But, based on the volume of purchases for cryptocurrency on this site, we can assume that there were many satisfied customers.

According to https://cointelegraph.com