Bitcoin Whale transfers $1 billion in bitcoin and pays $3.54 in fees?

[Juggy777]

I don’t need to tell you’ll how painful it is to see such high fees for transferring our bitcoins, and on top of that the number of unconfirmed transactions has also gone up.

While we are struggling with the fees, this Bitcoin whale managed to transfer $1 billion in bitcoins, and he only paid a measly fee of $3.54, and therefore I’m curious to know why wasn’t he also subjected to the high fees that we’re currently being forced to pay?.

Sources:

https://decrypt.co/46346/someone-just-sent-1-billion-in-bitcoin-paid-only-3-in-fees

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-fees-spike-198-but-ethereum-still-more-profitable

https://cointelegraph.com/news/unconfirmed-transactions-on-bitcoin-network-at-highest-level-since-2017

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[Oshosondy]

You are right, the issue of congested mempool is the issue we are facing now, but later on, it will be over. I can see many of my transactions not getting confirmed in time but in this case, we can pump the fee, electrum wallet is good at pumping fee, and also some other wallets like bitcoin core can also pump bitcoin fee which will be an alternative in case the bitcoin is needed in time.

[Coin_trader]

Considering the amount of money he was holding. It's either from a group of individual or a single whale that has a connection/have own mining farm that prioritize his transaction block. The owner is confident that his transaction will be complete even though there are tons of pending transaction on mem pool. There is no way that this guy didn't know what he is doing by sending huge amount of money using small amount of fee.

[bL4nkcode]

While we are struggling with the fees, this Bitcoin whale managed to transfer $1 billion in bitcoins, and he only paid a measly fee of $3.54, and therefore I’m curious to know why wasn’t he also subjected to the high fees that we’re currently being forced to pay?.

Simply, the sender sends from a single input, that's why he only paid merely 0.00027ish btc due to lower transaction size regardless the number of bitcoins sent.

Though we can call them bitcoin whale, but that's from Xapo, an exchange, which probably they as a company makes fund transfer either to its cold wallet or vault for security reasons.

[NeuroticFish]

While we are struggling with the fees, this Bitcoin whale managed to transfer $1 billion in bitcoins, and he only paid a measly fee of $3.54, and therefore I’m curious to know why wasn’t he also subjected to the high fees that we’re currently being forced to pay?

I've checked two charts for 26 October and I think that the difference may be caused by timezone.
One chart tells that average fee was 3.44$ that day, another one tells 5.74$.
I tend to believe the smaller fee since it was week-end.

So imho "the whale" has paid basically the normal fee for the moment he sent the transaction.

Obviously the news tell nothing. The news is insisting on the fee vs total value transacted, which is stupid (but of course, it can surprise the newbies). A Bitcoin transaction fee depends on its (virtual) size in bytes (so the number of inputs and outputs, the address type), not the value (or price) of what's transacted.

[serjent05]

Those who write the news either don't know or pretend don't know how Bitcoin transaction fee works.

I bet the author knows about Bitcoin but pretending to be surprised since his intent is to sensationalize things about the Bitcoin fee being cheap nullifying whiners on BTC fee being high.  Well, this is not new to us but I bet his (author) target are people out there that will be interested especially those who transfer huge amounts of money and wanted to be discounted on transferring/transaction fees.

[goldade]

I don’t need to tell you’ll how painful it is to see such high fees for transferring our bitcoins, and on top of that the number of unconfirmed transactions has also gone up.

While we are struggling with the fees, this Bitcoin whale managed to transfer $1 billion in bitcoins, and he only paid a measly fee of $3.54, and therefore I’m curious to know why wasn’t he also subjected to the high fees that we’re currently being forced to pay?.

Sources:

https://decrypt.co/46346/someone-just-sent-1-billion-in-bitcoin-paid-only-3-in-fees

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-fees-spike-198-but-ethereum-still-more-profitable

https://cointelegraph.com/news/unconfirmed-transactions-on-bitcoin-network-at-highest-level-since-2017

Why are you complaining because bitcoin is serving its purpose. We'd all agree one of the very reasons many of us use bitcoin is because of the very low transaction fees as compared to banks. If someone sent that huge amount of money with such low transaction fee, then good for him because he's making the most of the advantages of bitcoin.
Secondly, you should know that transaction fees are not determined by the amount of money transferred but the size of the transaction itself.
You should be patient enough to wait longer for your transactions to be successful if you don't want to pay high transaction fee that are required for instant transfer.

[yazher]

Considering the amount of money he was holding. It's either from a group of individual or a single whale that has a connection/have own mining farm that prioritize his transaction block. The owner is confident that his transaction will be complete even though there are tons of pending transaction on mem pool. There is no way that this guy didn't know what he is doing by sending huge amount of money using small amount of fee.

This is should be the case or the list of theories might go on and on. The only way to successfully manage to send that amount with low fees is to pay some mining companies for their service and your theories might be the closest one to prove it. Anyway sending a huge amount of money in a single transaction was amazing and I wonder where those BTC came from. If it is from a known Exchange then that would be much easier to explain then.

[dothebeats]

It's normal and entirely dependent on the time of the day when the transaction was sent. Seeing the average fees during that time, it's not even far off really, and also if someone has that amount on their wallets, they could easily ask miners to include that transaction within their blocks in order to get confirmed easily. It's not really far from happening and in fact, it's actually one of bitcoin's intended role. It may not be perpetually true for bitcoin but for the most part, you can send virtually any amount without having to pay for a hefty fee.

[fauzan123]

You are right, the issue of congested mempool is the issue we are facing now, but later on, it will be over. I can see many of my transactions not getting confirmed in time but in this case, we can pump the fee, electrum wallet is good at pumping fee, and also some other wallets like bitcoin core can also pump bitcoin fee which will be an alternative in case the bitcoin is needed in time.

Yes, there are many ways to be able to speed up the transactions we do, mainly by increasing the transaction fees received, of course this can also speed up our transactions.

Because as we know every day more and more bitcoin users will certainly take longer time to make transactions.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

You are right, the issue of congested mempool is the issue we are facing now, but later on, it will be over.

The hope word 'Later' has been in used since I could remember, that's when the high fees became a trending discussion in the late 2017. The recommendations of using the SegWit address became a norm that It'll help in lesser transaction fees but it seems from recent experience that's not the incase. If Bitcoin strongly has the   intentions of conquering the furnace industry in regards to been the recommended payment option due to its unique quality then the miners have to become less greedy.

Here we're praising this low fee on such high amount of value been transferred yet the majority are getting drowned in outrageous charges. Don't forget the network patronage would be coming more from those in middle or low class which won't have such high value in their wallet.

I spent over $10 in fees for a value barely worth $19 in bitcoin (you can read on it here). The issue of high fees are far from getting over but we hope further since that has been the only options so far.

[Yaunfitda]

And probably the whales are not in a hurry and is willing to pay the 'average' fee as compare to us, who wanted to get our transaction get confirmed in the next block because we wanted to see it go through our wallet in matter of minutes or hours and not days.

[mindrust]

I think moving 1 billion USD only for 3 bucks is pretty cheap. It is not really cheap when you want to pay 3 fiddies to the miners to move 20 bucks however. That's why altcoins are still a thing.

[stompix]

While we are struggling with the fees, this Bitcoin whale managed to transfer $1 billion in bitcoins, and he only paid a measly fee of $3.54, and therefore I’m curious to know why wasn’t he also subjected to the high fees that we’re currently being forced to pay?.

The tx date according to blockchain is 2020-10-26 17:06
Looking at the mempool it happened somewhere here:


so before the rise in fees, or at least at the start of it.

LE:
Ignore that drop in the graph, it's a glitch, the moment of the tx is where the red do is.

[tranthidung]

I've checked two charts for 26 October and I think that the difference may be caused by timezone.
One chart tells that average fee was 3.44$ that day, another one tells 5.74$.

• Timezones make differences because there are geographical locations from which more bitcoin transactions will made. More transaction counts do cause higher transaction fee.
• Days of week make difference too. Weekends usually give you better fee rate (cheaper). Do you know that in last weekend, there are few times mempool was dipped to 1 satoshi/(v)byte before all things go up?
• Another reason is average and median are different statistics. Average can be seriously affected by outliers (red circles in the box plot) but median can not. You can call median as true average statistics of a sample.

More details is here Bitcoin transaction fees (feer per KB - in USD) with median, outliers, plots

There were people who spent $153 per kb for his/ her transaction. Crazy sender!

About weekend and institutional effects (I gonna give you updates and improve that thread later).

Weekend to come so please consolidate your coins and / or move your funds to save fees. If you don't have need to move your coins, consolidate them instead (at 1 satoshi/byte).

Look at below statistics for latest update and compare median transaction fees (in satoshis/ kB) on Sunday and Saturday to Friday:

• Friday: 18471
• Saturday: 14258 (22.8% cheaper)
• Sunday: 12701 (31.2% cheaper)

Transaction fee is decided by transaction size and fee rate.

• Fee rate: Senders can set any fee rate they want -- of course, must avoid 0 satoshi/(v)byte.
• Transaction size: is decided by input and output (types and numbers).

If you make 2 transactions with same type and same fee rate, just different in the amount of bitcoin (and value in USD), 2 transactions will have same transaction fee.  

Reminders

• Consolidate your small inputs (I learned it from LoyceV). If you do it on last weekend, today you can make transaction with cheaper fees (even you have to make 2 transactions, 1 on last weekend and 1 today)
• Observe mempool and plan your transactions (days of week and hourframe)
• Sign your transaction with opt-in Replace-by-Fee option (just in case) when fee rate is low
• Be your own bank with non-custodial wallet. If you use custodial wallet or store your bitcoin on exchanges, casinos you have accept funny situations

[Hemady17]

It does not depend to the number of bitcoin or total cost of bitcoin you have transferred. It just show the irrelevance of the size of transaction and the rate. You can transfer fastly when the network is not that much congested. So to avoid difficulty in transacting or paying a lot of fees, better to look in the mempool.

[Ucy]

The fee is really low for such a huge transfer. I wonder how long it took for the transaction to confirm. In my opinion, more should have been charged as fee for such an amount if the network is really congested and if this was for fast transfer. .

[BrewMaster]

that's simply because in bitcoin when we send a transaction we pay for the space in blocks not for the transfer of amount of money. that is one of many things that sets bitcoin apart from banks.

i wouldn't call them a "whale" either. the more appropriate word is to call them "custodian" since it clearly belongs to a service and it is their users' funds not their own.

[Artemis3]

I don’t need to tell you’ll how painful it is to see such high fees for transferring our bitcoins, and on top of that the number of unconfirmed transactions has also gone up.

While we are struggling with the fees, this Bitcoin whale managed to transfer $1 billion in bitcoins, and he only paid a measly fee of $3.54, and therefore I’m curious to know why wasn’t he also subjected to the high fees that we’re currently being forced to pay?.

Because the whale wasn't idiot to let a wallet pick a tx fee. If I was the whale, i would do exactly the same: Set it to 1 sat/B broadcast and leave it alone... Especially if this was destined to a cold wallet, one day or three won't make any difference.

We are not "subject" to anything. You are letting a wallet decide for you. This is your mistake as an user, its not even Bitcoin's fault, but whoever designed the wallet to default to this abominable guessing fee thing which isn't part of Bitcoin in the first place.

"High fees" is an artifact myth of whoever decided users were "too dumb" to choose a fee for themselves. I do blame wallet developers for defaulting to this.

You can right now use a low 3 sat/B fee for a 1 day confirmation. Is your wallet even telling you this? Of course next block costs 280, and one hour 266, and the other wallets are also calculating the same and adding more and more, its like a horde of bots self feeding themselves, it only took a little price fluctuation to initiate the cascade; and i bet those exchange/online wallets that you can't even change the tx fee at all aren't exactly helping... Sure, lets remove the "confusing" (sane) manual setting of a fee, the "user" only wants things by the next block, or one hour (6 blocks) at most. Lets call it "Priority", because you know, confusing numbers, math is hard... What could possibly go wrong?

People thinking Bitcoin is "subjecting people to high fees". Never ending talk about "high fees", because the wallets are racing each other to confirm first by user choice...

[Ayiranorea]

The fee for every transaction is allocated in terms of the block size, but for some reason a small transaction and a large volume transaction getting accumulated in similar block size. Somehow bitcoin too is favouring the people with large volume of funds. Anyhow it hasn't turned to be a rich man's asset till now.