- A Bitcoin user appears to have mistakenly paid 83.6 bitcoin ($3.1 million) in a single transaction.
- The whopping fee sets a new record in U.S. dollar terms for a transaction on the Bitcoin network.
A Bitcoin user seems to have mistakenly paid a transaction fee of over $3.1 million today, setting a new record in US dollar terms for a single Bitcoin transaction, more than six times the previous record of a $500,000 fee paid in September.
The transaction was made at 9:59 a.m. UTC, paying 83.65 BTC ($3.1 million) to transfer 55.77 BTC ($2.1 million). The pre-transaction balance was 139.42 BTC ($5.2 million), with the user overpaying by 120,528 times, according to Bitcoin explorer Mempool.
The address used to make the payment was activated earlier today, making three Bitcoin transactions before a fourth incurred the record fee. The receiving address is also relatively new, dating back to October 16.
The transaction was mined by AntPool in block 818,087, according to the blockchain explorer Blockchair. The transaction already has about 3 confirmations as of writing. According to mempool.space, this fee was overpaid by 120,258 times, which suggests a mistake.
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AntPool has not yet publicly commented on the transaction.
The previous record $500,000 fee paid in September was subsequently identified as a “fat finger” overpayment by the crypto services provider Paxos. F2Pool, the miner facilitating that transaction, agreed to reimburse the fee to Paxos.
The entity behind this latest transaction fee remains unknown. It is also unclear whether AntPool would be willing to come to a similar agreement. But one thing is sure, this is the highest single Bitcoin fee ever paid to miners, collected by Antpool.
Interestingly, a failed attempt to fork the blockchain at block height 818087 appears to have occurred in the meantime. While writing this report, the block status changed to “Stale” and was supposedly replaced with an exact copy, suggesting it remains valid.
Bitcoin transaction fees are a protocol feature created to prioritize transactions in a free fee-bid market. Senders can manually set any desired amount to pay for the miner that will add the sending transaction to a new valid block. Users must be careful to make sure they are not overpaying fees while making a BTC transaction.
