Key Points:
- Record-breaking 83 BTC fee likely a user error, raises transaction caution.
- Antpool benefits greatly, highlighting mining pool dynamics in crypto transactions.
- F2Pool’s fee refund decision in September sparks community debate on fairness.
In a remarkable turn of events, a Bitcoin (BTC) wallet address has set a new record by paying an unprecedented transaction fee of 83 BTC, which amounts to approximately $3.13 million. This fee was paid to transfer a sum of 55 BTC on November 23. This event marks the highest fee ever paid in a single Bitcoin transaction, with the mining pool Antpool benefiting from this enormous sum.
A Mistake with Major Implications?
The transaction occurred in block 818087 and has already been confirmed thrice. Analysis from mempool.space indicates that the fee was a staggering 120,258 times more than the typical amount, suggesting this was likely an error.
Before this transaction, the wallet address, identified as “bc1qn…ekrnl”, held 139 BTC valued at around $5.24 million in a single Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO). This wallet transferred 55 BTC to another address, “bc1qy…m36t4”, incurring a fee cost of 83 BTC in the process. The block in which this transaction was included collected a total reward of 91.466 BTC, comprising a block subsidy of 6.25 BTC and fees amounting to 85.216 BTC. The error accounted for 90% of the total block reward.
Antpool, the largest Bitcoin mining pool owned by ASIC producer BITMAIN, was the fortuitous recipient of these fees. Intriguingly, there was also a failed attempt to fork the blockchain at block height 818087. During the composition of this report, the block’s status briefly changed to “Stale” and was then replaced with an identical copy, indicating that it remains valid despite this anomaly.
F2Pool’s Decision to Refund Overpaid Fee
In a related incident in September, F2Pool, the third-largest Bitcoin mining pool, identified Paxos as the entity responsible for mistakenly overpaying 19 BTC (worth $510,000) in transaction fees. Unlike the recent event, F2Pool refunded the overpaid fee, which sparked debate within the cryptocurrency community. Some prominent figures argued that the refund should have been distributed to the pool’s miners.
Conclusion
Bitcoin transaction fees are integral to the network’s protocol, prioritizing transactions in a competitive fee-bid market. Users can manually set the fee amount but must exercise caution to avoid overpaying. This latest incident is a stark reminder of the importance of attentiveness when setting transaction fees in the Bitcoin network.
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