Callum

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[Callum @callumxbt]

@ilar0x Every manager story has the same line in it: never looked at a statement. One envelope a quarter is the cheapest insurance there is

[Callum @callumxbt]

@yuradeniis Did he ever say who the employee was, or whether anyone was charged for the fire?

[Callum @callumxbt]

Prince could break down a $20 million record deal on live TV in under a minute. He died without a will.

His bank said the estate was worth $82.3 million. The IRS said $163.2 million.

In the video below, he's on a late-night talk show and the host brings up Mariah Carey's $20 million deal. Prince asks what everyone thinks is good about it. Then he does the math out loud. An $18 album, half to him. "If I sell a million copies, I'm gonna have ten million dollars." Three million copies, thirty million. By the end, Mariah "kind of got screwed."

This was a man who wrote "slave" on his face to fight his own label for his music.

He died in April 2016. No will, no plan for who would own any of it.

So a bank ran the estate, and six siblings waited. Lawyers and consultants were paid tens of millions of dollars while the case dragged on. The estate and the IRS spent years fighting over what his music was worth, because the gap decided how much tax was owed at 40%.

In 2022 they settled at $156.4 million, close to what the IRS had said. By then two of the siblings had died. Half the estate ended up with a music company that had bought out three of the heirs.

My take: he understood a contract better than anyone in that room, and the one document he never signed was the one that cost his family the most. Most people with a fraction of his money are in the same spot right now.

Was it on Prince to leave a will, or on a system that took six years and tens of millions to divide what he left?

[Callum @callumxbt]

@Kv0r1n which makes you wonder what number primary wave used when it bought out three of the heirs

[Callum @callumxbt]

Prince could break down a $20 million record deal on live TV in under a minute. He died without a will.

His bank said the estate was worth $82.3 million. The IRS said $163.2 million.

In the video below, he's on a late-night talk show and the host brings up Mariah Carey's $20 million deal. Prince asks what everyone thinks is good about it. Then he does the math out loud. An $18 album, half to him. "If I sell a million copies, I'm gonna have ten million dollars." Three million copies, thirty million. By the end, Mariah "kind of got screwed."

This was a man who wrote "slave" on his face to fight his own label for his music.

He died in April 2016. No will, no plan for who would own any of it.

So a bank ran the estate, and six siblings waited. Lawyers and consultants were paid tens of millions of dollars while the case dragged on. The estate and the IRS spent years fighting over what his music was worth, because the gap decided how much tax was owed at 40%.

In 2022 they settled at $156.4 million, close to what the IRS had said. By then two of the siblings had died. Half the estate ended up with a music company that had bought out three of the heirs.

My take: he understood a contract better than anyone in that room, and the one document he never signed was the one that cost his family the most. Most people with a fraction of his money are in the same spot right now.

Was it on Prince to leave a will, or on a system that took six years and tens of millions to divide what he left?

[Callum @callumxbt]

@MarkTaylormmh and minnesota only exempted the first $3m, so pretty much the whole estate was in range of both

[Callum @callumxbt]

@ilar0x true, and that's what made the estate worth fighting over. he got the masters back and then left nobody with the right to sign for them

[Callum @callumxbt]

@yuradeniis almost all of that gap was the music. publishing and recording rights are where the bank and the irs split, and that's exactly what the 40% tax was riding on

[Callum @callumxbt]

@koaxbt and after six years they landed close to the irs's number anyway

[Callum @callumxbt]

@gosh_sol_eth fair. he spent years making sure no label owned his masters, then left it to a probate court to decide who owns them

[Callum @callumxbt]

@0xjakke no single number was ever published. what's on record is the heirs complaining about millions in legal fees, and the irs dropping a $6.4m penalty as part of the deal

[Callum @callumxbt]

@koaxbt Shrewd. Anyone can get lucky with an ad. He's the one who put his own signature on a phone number before anyone thought it was an asset.

[Callum @callumxbt]

@koaxbt all five counts he faced, same 1 to 3 years as her son. the changes to her will they pushed through while she had alzheimers were half the trial

[Callum @callumxbt]

Brooke Astor gave away nearly $195 million to New York. At 100, she was told she couldn't afford a new dress.

Her son ran her money. Her grandson turned him in.

In 2002 Anthony Marshall sold his mother's favorite painting, Childe Hassam's "Flags, Fifth Avenue", for $10 million. He took $2 million of it as a commission. She had promised the painting to the Met.

In the video below, her grandson Philip describes what came next. After hearing about the sale, he says, his grandmother asked: "Now can I buy dresses?" The answer was no. She was being told she was going broke.

Philip is Anthony's son. In 2006 he went to court to take his grandmother's care away from his own father.

Brooke died the next year at 105. In 2009 a jury convicted Anthony on 14 counts, including first-degree grand larceny. It cleared him on the painting. The top count was giving himself a $1 million raise for managing her money.

He got one to three years. He went to prison in June 2013, at 89, and walked out on medical parole exactly two months later.

The woman who paid for the New York Public Library, the Bronx Zoo and Central Park spent her last years being told to cut back.

My take: the $10 million sale isn't the scariest part. A son decided what his mother believed about her own bank account, and it took her grandson to check.

Did Philip do the right thing taking his father to court, or should a family keep this behind closed doors?

[Callum @callumxbt]

Corrinne Durber's screen said she had won £1,097,132.71. Paddy Power paid her £20,265.14 and told her the screen was wrong.

A judge decided the screen was the deal.

She was a gardener in Gloucestershire. On 18 October 2020 she was playing a game called Wild Hatter on her iPad.

In the video below, she tells it herself. The wheel went "tick, tick, tick, bang in the middle of the Monster Jackpot." She took a screenshot. Then money started landing in her account and stopped at £20,000. She had wanted to keep the win as a birthday surprise for her husband. Instead customer services pushed her "from pillar to post" for weeks, until the answer was: it's a glitch.

Paddy Power's explanation: a software supplier had mapped the jackpots to the wrong symbols, so the animation showed one prize while the system had picked a smaller one. Its terms said the system's result was final.

She sued. In March 2025 the High Court gave her summary judgment, no full trial needed. The company had to pay the amount on the screen. Terms that put the whole risk of the company's own mistakes on the player were unfair under the Consumer Rights Act.

The part almost nobody read: the same error hit 14 plays over 48 days. Hers was one of them. Contract claims in England run for six years, so for anyone else who spun that wheel in autumn 2020, the clock runs out around now.

My take: if an ATM showed £1 million and paid out £20,000, nobody would accept "the screen was wrong". She only got the right answer because she could stay in court for four and a half years.

Should a company have to pay whatever its own screen shows, or is a glitch just a glitch?

[Callum @callumxbt]

@ilar0x Did Burges ever get paid back, and was it in BTC or at the 2014 price?

[Callum @callumxbt]

@Quantex0x they wouldnt even need to ask. their terms already let them void anything a system error paid out. the judge called putting all that risk on the player unfair

[Callum @callumxbt]

Corrinne Durber's screen said she had won £1,097,132.71. Paddy Power paid her £20,265.14 and told her the screen was wrong.

A judge decided the screen was the deal.

She was a gardener in Gloucestershire. On 18 October 2020 she was playing a game called Wild Hatter on her iPad.

In the video below, she tells it herself. The wheel went "tick, tick, tick, bang in the middle of the Monster Jackpot." She took a screenshot. Then money started landing in her account and stopped at £20,000. She had wanted to keep the win as a birthday surprise for her husband. Instead customer services pushed her "from pillar to post" for weeks, until the answer was: it's a glitch.

Paddy Power's explanation: a software supplier had mapped the jackpots to the wrong symbols, so the animation showed one prize while the system had picked a smaller one. Its terms said the system's result was final.

She sued. In March 2025 the High Court gave her summary judgment, no full trial needed. The company had to pay the amount on the screen. Terms that put the whole risk of the company's own mistakes on the player were unfair under the Consumer Rights Act.

The part almost nobody read: the same error hit 14 plays over 48 days. Hers was one of them. Contract claims in England run for six years, so for anyone else who spun that wheel in autumn 2020, the clock runs out around now.

My take: if an ATM showed £1 million and paid out £20,000, nobody would accept "the screen was wrong". She only got the right answer because she could stay in court for four and a half years.

Should a company have to pay whatever its own screen shows, or is a glitch just a glitch?

[Callum @callumxbt]

@Zyron5m pretty much where the judge landed. he called what you see is what you get central to the game, and the supplier's mapping mistake was paddy power's problem, not hers

[Callum @callumxbt]

@koaxbt and even with the screenshot the betting adjudication service told her she had no chance. she only got to court because a lawyer took it on no win no fee

[Callum @callumxbt]

@yuradeniis nobody knows yet. the case only shows the error hit 14 plays, not who was playing or what their screens said. thats why theyre still looking for them