If I were to make a deal with the devil, it would probably go something like this: I want to be the richest person on earth so I can buy all the coffee I could ever want. The devil, who for whatever reason has taken the form of a cool Gen-Zer, would then say, “okay bet.” This is how I’d lose my soul, absolutely certain that I was very smart and had safeguarded against any possible loophole ole Mephistopheles may try to employ to turn the deal immediately sour. (Which I never understood anyway. You already got my soul on layaway, why do you care if I have a good time in the interim?)
Thankfully, it appears a woman in the UK already made this particular Faustian bargain and revealed the devil’s little tricks to all the world. Sophie Downing is technically a quadrillionaire, but she can only spend her money at one particular coffee shop.
And not just a £1 quadrillionaire, but a £63 quadrillionaire, which is a 63 with 15 zeros after it. And these are GBPs. Converted to USD and it’s more like $85 quadrillion. To put that into perspective, that’s over 100,000 Elon Musks (God can you even imagine?), or over 670 times the entire global economy. Which is to say, she is rich enough to nullify the entire concept of money. If the devil wasn’t in fact in the details anyway.
As reported by the BBC, the vast majority of Downing’s wealth exists on a gift card. What was meant to be a £10 gift card to local coffee shop 200 Degrees in Nottingham, but due to what the cafe calls “an administrative error” was loaded with a balance of—and I’ll only be writing this in its entirely one time—£63,011,900,191,687,378.60.
Turns out that it is actually the gift card number, which the barista erroneously loaded as the balance.
But before you cheeky little monkeys get any bright ideas, the gift card balance has been corrected and spent by Downing, who says she had no plans of taking advantage of the error. Though she did say she wished the gift card would have worked at the grocery store.
So let this be a lesson to all of you. If you choose to make a deal with the devil and trade your eternal soul for temporary satisfaction on this here mortal coil, just beware, you may get everything you’ve ever wanted and live happily ever after.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
