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I was browsing the mempool and saw that a block had fees ranging from 1sat/vb to 280 000 sat/vb
This tx was the culprit:
https://mempool.space/tx/8245e67349565e481c622fe3437408db7344cdf730edb193c1466326eb021c0b

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/05/22/UaJJZ3.png

Worth it?!?

For a stunt to talk about it - maybe ;D

They did it so that everybody would discuss it, probably.

In other words, MARA Slipstream finally bring significant amount of additional income to them :D. They even made a tweet about it on https://x.com/MARAHoldings/status/1925453782973870199 (https://x.com/MARAHoldings/status/1925453782973870199).

Interesting, didn't see the news about it, but they did something unique: an art is an art ;D

For Gemini, such a payment is probably like you or me paying $1 in fees. I think it is a nice commemoration of an important day by one of the larger companies in this space.


Now if only my returns would also have a multiplier like this.  :D

I don't understand how they can waste money like that. Wouldn't it have been the same if they get to pay $1K instead of $100K? I don't see the logic of it, unless they want to advertise with me and I can see that they have plenty of money but the advertising has been a bit expensive.

Although I see in the tweet they say they have “teamed up” with Gemini. I don't know, it still seems like too much money to me.

It is possible that this is purely visual (advertising) and that the reward goes to the same owner, since MARA Pool is private and its fees and rewards remain with Marathon.

No amount of fees paid guarantees you anything. A transaction with a high fee could still be included later than a transaction with a low fee. A higher fee merely improves your chances of inclusion. The more you pay, the higher the chances. How much you are willing to pay depends on how badly you want something done.

There are also marketing reasons to do it like this. Would anyone really care if they paid $1k in fees for this? Not as much.

It's not waste.

It's marketing.

We and others are talking about it, increasing Gemini awareness in the world.

This is what happens when big corporations are sitting on too much of money which they don't know how to spend in a better way.

Celebrate pizza day - sure! Feed 10,000 orphans and homeless people a slice of pizza. That's a meaningful spending than creating a blockchain art! Really nonsense!

Thats because embedding complex visual patterns in the blockchain requires a large number of specific high fee transactions to control the visual output on blockchain explorers.


It was for promotion and the fee was paid to itself to there was barely any cost.
They just continue to spam the Blockchain like they have been doing.
Showcasing their capabilities to do such.

Ah yes, browsing the mempool. Like the rest of us Bitcoiners, because we have such exquisite reserves of time on our hands.


Given that me paying $1 in fees compares to say, 0.05% of minimum wage in my current country of residence, then Gemini "only" has a monthly revenue of $200,000,000. I know, I know, a pointless point to point out, but I'm sure that was a wee bit more painful than chump change ;)

Which suggests as others have, it's just money that'll cycle back or pay for something else in the partnership.

You know, like if I needed to clean a dosh of monies, I'll just splash a caviar dinner with a posh artist and agree to bid the amount on his latest masterpiece at Sotheby's. He and the auctioneer keep something for their troubles, and then donate half of it to my charity. Or some other deal or such.

I agree with you that this is more of a foolish move than an ideal way to promote a brand or market anything. The amount may not be significant for large corporations, but it is indeed a huge sum compared to the anticipated goals. The same amount could have been given to charities as part of a bounty campaign or to new startups, i.e., to encourage innovation and useful initiatives. There are a thousand other ways to use the money and generate returns.

Another possibility occurred to my brain: if miners can confirm the transactions they broadcast themselves, couldn't this be part of an agreement between the company issuing the transaction and the mining party? I still find it absurd that someone would do this, unless it was a human error, which I completely rule out in this case.

That would bring a good marketing to the said platform too, but I guess they chose this option because it's much easier to pull off, and get the immediate results.

You don't know what you are talking about. Maybe open the link first?

Can someone please explain to me how they were able to mine a block that only cost $120K in transaction fees, when the block reward was 3.125 BTC which is >$300K? This seems like an infinite money glitch.

The fees are just added up to the reward, as far as I know.

And said fee was put high above to gain traction.

But it seems like if you pay a lot in fees like this, and then mine your own block, you are making a huge profit?

I mean, why not just do this all the time for an infinite money glitch?

No, how would that work? If you give your mom $20 and later she gives it back to you did you make $20 in profit? :D

If you pay a high fee on a transaction, and then you are the one who mined the block that contains it you can consider it a refund on the fee. You have effectively paid $0. But on the other hand, you have probably lost a bit of money because you could have included someone else's transaction which does pay a fee. Because of that doing this is not recommended except for some marketing stunts.

Please read my earlier reply. What actually happen is Gemini (an exchange) paid MARA (mining pool) slipstream service to include their custom transaction. MARA didn't mine their own TX in this case. And if they do that, it's not infinity money glitch since they missed chance to get TX fee from including someone else TX.

I see a large amount of negative replies to that tweet. :o

So, now that some time has gone by and the dust has settled, I wonder: was the 100k marketing gag worth it? I do not think it was.

It does not seem like it was a well-thought-out PR stunt because there appears to be minimal traction. It did not gather as much attention as they hoped it would. If anything, a lot of people are viewing it negatively.

I am sure 100k is nothing to Gemini anyway. ::)

You have a point, but I think the major reason behind the collaboration between the Mara and the Gemini exchange is not about gaining traction, because it is something they easily achieved by paying bloggers, crypto news platforms, and other influencers to do the assignment, once the major forces in this space announcement the transaction other influencers will do the same.
How do you think some shitcoins get huge traction?

According to the link provided by ABCbits, the major concept is to honor Bitcoin Pizza Day which other crypto related platform does the same thing but in different ways.

They have the funds to keep trying to find the stunt that - will - be perceived well eventually.

So..Yeah ;D