Paying a record $3 million in fees to process a single transaction worth around $5 million, a bitcoin user recently appears to have made an expensive mistake.
This came from a publicly traded 139.42 BTC transaction, in block 818087. However, 83.64 BTC of this amount went directly to the miners as a transaction fee. This left the recipient with only 55.77 BTC, worth around $2 million.
The $3 million fee is the highest ever paid for a bitcoin transaction. Experts say it was likely an accident, as fees are not supposed to exceed the amount sent.
This incident follows a case in September where crypto firm Paxos paid $500,000 to send a $2,000 transaction, which was later refunded by F2Pool.
While a mistake seems probable, Bitcoin fees have increased lately amid hype for Bitcoin Ordinals. These digital assets like images inscribe data onto Bitcoin’s smallest unit, satoshis. The added activity from Ordinals makes the network busier and more expensive.
So while unfortunate, this record fee was potentially just another case of user error combined with network congestion. The user likely won’t see that $3 million again.
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