Investor paid over $ 3 million for just one transaction on the Bitcoin network

The unknown user paid a staggering 83.65 BTC in fees for the digital asset transaction. At the current exchange rate, this is equivalent to $ 3.1 million.

According to the Bitinfocharts service, the average commission in the bitcoin network is currently $ 10.51. According to journalist Colin Wu, the block with a transaction volume of 139.42 BTC ($ 5.2 million) was validated by the AntPool mining pool.

The high fee was probably the result of a technical error on the part of the user. In September, a similar story happened to another user who paid a fee of 20 BTC ($ 520,000 as of September 10) for just one transaction. Then it turned out that the transaction was made by Paxos. The firm accidentally overpaid this fee for the transfer of 0.074 BTC, equivalent to $ 200.

The extremely high fee has attracted the attention of blockchain analysts. Some believe that the mistake could have been caused by a software bug, while others see the payment of 20 BTC as a big gift for miners who receive commissions as compensation for maintaining network security.

«I think it’s important to remember that blockchain value is crucial to the well-being of the network in the long run, as it increases rewards to miners and therefore security, especially during periods of high transaction demand,» crypto expert Seth Michael Steele said at the time.

It is important to keep in mind that the average transfer fee in the BTC network may vary due to network congestion. For example, during the cryptocurrency boom of 2017, the fee increased to almost $ 60.

According to the analytical tracker CoinMarketCap, at the time of writing, the market leader is trading for $ 37,423, maintaining a stable price for several days. The market capitalization of BTC is $ 731 billion, and the daily trading volume is $ 10 billion.