An unknown Bitcoin user made a costly mistake on Thursday by paying over $3.1 million in transaction fees for a transfer mined by Antpool, the highest in Bitcoin’s history. The fee exceeds the previous record for the highest-ever Bitcoin transaction cost.
On-chain data shows that the sender’s wallet was created minutes before sending 139.42 BTC, but the recipient ultimately received only 55.78 BTC after the exorbitant fee was deducted. Antpool collected the standard 6.25 BTC as the block reward plus 85.2163 BTC in combined fees.
Although mining pool F2Pool returned an accidental 19.8 BTC fee in September, Antpool has yet to issue a statement regarding this much larger overpayment. Some believe that the error might be tied to congestion from increased activity around Bitcoin-based NFT project Ordinals.
The $3.1 million mistake serves as an expensive reminder to double-check fee calculations when transferring Bitcoin, regardless of intent. As cryptocurrency prices continue to rise, user errors like this carry even greater consequences.
