A Bitcoin User Pays $3.1 Million Transaction Fee in Bitcoin Transfer

A Bitcoin user recently paid an astonishing transaction fee of $3.1 million in a transfer worth 139.42 BTC. This transaction fee is one of the highest in Bitcoin’s 14-year history.

The BTC wallet address bc1qn3d…wekrnl attempted to transfer 139.42 BTC to bc1qyf…km36t4 on November 23rd. However, the sender ended up paying more than half the value of the transfer in transaction fees. The destination address only received 55.77 BTC. This unusually high mining fee was captured by the mining pool Antpool on block 818087.

Social media users have suggested that the sender may have intentionally selected a high transaction fee. However, both the replace-by-fee (RBF) node policy and the sender’s lack of awareness likely played a role in this incident. RBF allows an unconfirmed transaction in the mempool to be replaced with a different transaction that offers a higher fee to expedite its approval. The mempool is where all BTC transactions are queued before being added to the Bitcoin blockchain.

A developer known as mononaut on X (formerly Twitter) explained that the user behind the transfer probably didn’t know that RBF orders cannot be canceled. They may have repeatedly increased the fee in an attempt to cancel the transaction. The RBF history shows that the last fee replacement increased the fee by an additional 20%, resulting in 12.54824636 BTC in fees.

Interestingly, this is not the first time a Bitcoin user has accidentally paid an exorbitantly high transaction fee for a single transaction. In September, the Bitcoin exchange platform Paxos mistakenly paid a $500,000 fee for a $2,000 BTC transfer. The F2Pool miner who verified the transaction returned the accidental fee to Paxos.

However, this recent incident marks the largest Bitcoin transaction fee ever paid in dollar terms. It surpasses the previous record set by the Paxos transfer. In terms of actual Bitcoin, the highest fee paid was in 2016 when someone accidentally sent 291 BTC in transaction fees.

Mononaut mentioned that whether Antpool will return the funds depends on their own payout policies and obligations to share transaction fees with their miners. Antpool has not commented on the issue or responded to requests for comments from Cointelegraph.

Overall, this incident highlights the importance of understanding the intricacies of Bitcoin transactions and the potential consequences of incorrect fee selection.

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