Bitcoiner overpays 479867 times for a single transaction

Sending Bitcoin worth $2,000 and paying over $500,000 for it? This remarkable transaction is a record.

According to on-chain data, one Bitcoiner on Sept. 10 paid nearly 20 BTC, the equivalent of more than $500,000 in transaction fees for transferring only 0.074 BTC which is worth less than $2,000. According to data from ycharts a Bitcoin transaction currently actually costs $2.17. At 19.82 BTC, this transaction has the highest fee ever recorded by the Bitcoin network.

Blockchain analyst Jameson Lopp pointed out that the incident may have been caused by faulty software from an exchange or payment processor. According to Lopp, the address received and sent more than 60,000 transactions and likely miscalculated the change output, leading to errors in transaction fees.

He suspects that the address is a Hot-wallet is from a company that only withdraws money. "It seems that money is only occasionally deposited from an address to replenish the balance."

Chun Wang, the co-founder of F2Pool, said the nearly 20 BTC was temporarily withheld. The user responsible for the transaction has three days to claim the charges.