From Code mistake freezes up to $280 million in digital currency at Engadget:
Observers estimate that there could be more than 1 million in ether locked away, which would amount to roughly $280 million.
The digital wallet company Parity is warning users that a large volume of Ethereum funds have effectively been frozen after code contributor devops199 claims to have accidentally deleted the library needed to use multi-signature wallets (those that require more than one signature to move funds) created after July 20th.
This doesn’t mean that the currency is permanently off-limits, but unfreezing it and compensating users could involve a bailout. And whatever happens, the incident highlights a simple problem: digital wallets and cryptocurrency in general are only as reliable as the code that guides them.