One Ethereum trader just made $1,142,400 in seconds, thanks to an epic glitch

Yesterday, a market where people trade the Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency Ethereum crashed instantly.
The value of Ether (the Ethereum currency) plunged from about US $300 to $0.10 in seconds. Then it bouncing right back up to $300.
Here’s how this extremely unlikely event unfolded:
Around 12:30 pm PST the price of Ether — which had been trading on the GDAX currency exchange at around $300 — suddenly dropped to $0.10. The official explanation is that a trader placed a multi-million dollar order to sell Ether.
In the chaos, computers sold off Ether in automated, price-triggered “sell” orders. Traders lost millions of dollars.
But one trader had an automated “buy” order telling computers to buy 3,809 Ether if it ever dropped so low as $0.10.
Within a few minutes, the price of Ether completely recovered to around $300. This meant that the 3,809 Ether the trader had just bought was now worth $1,142,700. The trader had made a 300,000% return within a few minutes.
We’ve had “flash crashes” like this before (2010’s sudden Dow Jones price drop of 9%). But nothing of this magnitude, where an asset lost 99.96% of its value in a matter of seconds.
And in case you’re wondering, no — GDAX is not issuing refunds or reversing any of these trades. Here’s their official explanation of what happened.