On January 16, an unidentified individual paid a fee of 4.03 BTC ($173,148) for a single Bitcoin transaction. This was highlighted by the Whale Alert service.
? A fee of 4 #BTC (173,148 USD) has just been paid for a single transaction!https://t.co/enjdN4tn6z
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) January 16, 2024
The transfer amount was only 2.9 BTC.
Some commentators, suspecting a user error, advised to quickly remove the transaction from the mempool. Others speculated it might be money laundering.
Money laundering
— John | JustGo (@john_justgo) January 17, 2024
According to BitinfoCharts, the average fee in the Bitcoin network at the time of writing is $11.35. This figure has receded from a local high above $37, reached in December amid the Ordinals boom.
In September 2023, a transaction of 0.074 BTC with a fee of $510,750 was recorded on the blockchain.
Media identified the infrastructure company Paxos as responsible for the transaction. The firm described the overpayment as a one-time error. The mining pool F2Pool returned 19.82 BTC to Paxos after necessary checks.
In November, an unknown user paid a fee of 83.65 BTC ($3.1 million) for transferring 55.77 BTC ($2.1 million). This set a new record for the dollar equivalent of miner rewards for confirming a transaction.
The sender, under the nickname 83_5BTC, claimed to be a victim of a hacking attack.
AntPool expressed readiness to return the record fee after verifying the user’s identity.