Ouch, today someone made a transaction with over $500k fee.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I think this person instead of using a wallet, they probably wrote out the transaction by hand and got the miner fee mixed up with the transaction fee.

There is no "miner fee" and "transaction fee". These refer to the same thing. Bitcoin transactions pay a single fee, which goes to whichever miner includes that transaction in a block.

When a transaction is written out in raw hex, there is actually no field to specify the fee at all. You specify the inputs you want to spend, you specify the outputs you want to send money to, and you specify how much money you are sending to each output. You don't specify the fee. The fee is worked out from the sum of the inputs minus the sum of the outputs. It is essentially "whatever is left over". In previous transactions like this the error has been the creator not realizing this, forgetting to include a change address, and therefore everything that they didn't specify being used as a fee. What is unusual here is that the transaction involved does include a change address (the same address the coins are sent from), so the person who made this transaction has made some other mistake.

[1714651072]

1714651072

[1714651072]

1714651072

[1714651072]

1714651072

[retreat]

It was quite surprising to see 1 bitcoin transaction with fees that big and most likely that it was the sender's error because it was a public broadcast. I don't know what the sender was thinking, whether he was sleepy or what, because a sane person would not be able to arrange fees of that size for just one transaction worth $2K USD. Hopefully F2Pool can return the fees to the sender or not at all because it's not their fault.

[Doan9269]

The bitcoin fees market is getting out of control. Someone must've been really in a hurry as they paid BTC19.82 (~$511,000) fee just to send $2k worth.
Jokes aside, probably a very painful mistake. I wonder how's it going to unfold and whether the miner will return it to the unlucky sender.

Honestly there might just have been a mistake from either the sender making a mistake of adding an additional figure when he intends to press just only one or maybe the mining pool used broadcasred his transaction across other addresss who's transaction fees are higher making it appears that way, but since it's an open transaction we don't know which miner will claim this to add as their block reward, the error that happened could be traced down to the sender and not the network.

[Outhue]

That's a lot of money, I have made similar mistake before with one of the old popular Bitcoin wallet, I use 90$ to send 5$ worth of Bitcoin and it was a lot to me at the time because I couldn't even afford 100$ back then, I couldn't remember the name, but the wallet was out when JAXX wallet was newly released, oh yes it's Samorai wallet, I couldn't believe how it happened, because I have used Coinomi and Copay wallet before this wallet so I am very familiar with how to make Bitcoin transaction.

I just uninstalled the wallet and never look back, rushing to make transactions could make you do some costly mistakes, take your time, relax, and check the wallet you are sending Bitcoin to very well before clicking on the SEND button.

[avp2306]

The bitcoin fees market is getting out of control. Someone must've been really in a hurry as they paid BTC19.82 (~$511,000) fee just to send $2k worth.
Jokes aside, probably a very painful mistake. I wonder how's it going to unfold and whether the miner will return it to the unlucky sender.

Source:
Explorers: https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1700920065934213256
Blockstream: https://blockstream.info/tx/d5392d474b4c436e1c9d1f4ff4be5f5f9bb0eb2e26b61d2781751474b7e870fd?expand
Blockchain.com: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/d5392d474b4c436e1c9d1f4ff4be5f5f9bb0eb2e26b61d2781751474b7e870fd

He or She must be drunk will setting up that transaction since imagine how huge the fee he set up then for sure he is now so bothered with the money he lost out of that transaction. He should at least check the mempool to see what is the recommended fee to make his transaction fast but crazy things happen I guess this serves a lesson for him and for people which read his story since this is really a painful mistake done by holder.

[albert0bsd]

Nobody is mentioning that the address (bc1qr35hws365juz5rtlsjtvmulu97957kqvr3zpw3) is very active and it looks like all those TX are automated

So based on this personally i only can think that it was caused by a code error, some exception that was not correctly handled, but that is also very unlikey, as developer i don't see a case where it can fail like this.


if you see all TX the Change address is the firsts (Same wallet) and all of them are handled it correctly

[satscraper]

Assuming its a legit mistake only a major pool would fix this. A small pool would likely keep it.

It was mined by F2Pool

Seems like an human errror but i don't know what to think.

Is there any chance that  "human error"  was intentionally made as a  part of money laundering scheme used by F2Pool? I understand that it is very risky way to cleanse dirty money as the  transaction with such enormous fee could be mined by other pool but they might have no option other than to lose money or mine it be themselves.

[albert0bsd]

...  transaction with such enormous fee could be mined by other pool but they might have no option other than to lose money or mine it be themselves.

I already discard that theory, the TX was publicly broadcasted according to mempool.space data. The TX was match with the expected block.

According to blockchain

Broadcasted on 10 Sep 2023 5:02:56

And the block was mined:

Mined on September 10, 2023 5:10:01

Almost 7 minutes on mempool, that actually can be mined by anyone with some decent hash rate or some luck.

So if you want to launder some money you shouldn't use that way.

[AHOYBRAUSE]

Oh wow, what a costly mistake.

The question is, how can something like this happen?
At some wallets it gives you a warning if the fee you chose is way higher than necessary but 19btc, come on. Any wallet should stop the person of making this transaction as it is an obvious mistake.
Maybe now, after this story got public, wallets will make some adjustments to prevent something like that.

That's really some insane stuff. Hopefully the person has like 1000s of btc and can live with the error. This type of mistake can break a person and ruin his/her life forever otherwise.

[o_e_l_e_o]

So based on this personally i only can think that it was caused by a code error, some exception that was not correctly handled, but that is also very unlikey, as developer i don't see a case where it can fail like this.

Absolutely.

The address is obviously owned by some exchange or other service. It was first used fairly recently on June 22nd, and it seems to only have received funds from this address: bc1qlm0xlahpysq2v9yh5rhcc430xjz3xknqqnyvaf. The transactions are clearly automated. They've made 60,000 transactions without an error, and a few hundred more since this error occurred. I wonder what the error is? My only thought is someone tried to withdraw to the exchange's address and it somehow overwrote the change output.

F2Pool have said they will hold the funds for three days and return them to the rightful owner if claimed: https://nitter.cz/satofishi/status/1701042302238724512#m

[DVlog]

Yeah I was on Jochen earlier trying to find what is the optimal fee to use to send a transaction and noticed the huge spike which skewed the entire chart,
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,fee

See that high peak, yeah that was the transaction.

I think this person instead of using a wallet, they probably wrote out the transaction by hand and got the miner fee mixed up with the transaction fee. This is the only way I can see this happening since its most likely not laundering funds since it was mined by a large pool and not an unknown miner.

You have raised a good point. Mixing miner fees for transaction fees is understandable but a person with such an amount doesn't know which one is a miner fee is weird. Perhaps he sent that transaction in a hurry and didn't notice that the transaction fees he put in were enormous. There can be a wallet glitch as well. We don't know which wallet he was using so this is another possibility. I do not think that Send is a newcomer because a newcomer with that amount of Bitcoin is rare.

What if this was done with the intention of money laundering? This is a strange case and this doesn't look like a traditional money laundering. Perhaps someone was trying to obfuscate the origins of the BTC. But paying high fees like this doesn't make sense in traditional money laundering cases.

[bhadz]

F2Pool have said they will hold the funds for three days and return them to the rightful owner if claimed: https://nitter.cz/satofishi/status/1701042302238724512#m

While reading all of the posts in here, I was thinking if it's gonna be refunded but it's such a good news to see that F2Pool is just gonna hold based on the update given by oeleo.

That's really some insane stuff. Hopefully the person has like 1000s of btc and can live with the error. This type of mistake can break a person and ruin his/her life forever otherwise.

I think it's a rare case and usually people that make a mistake like this aren't really people but the exchanges or some huge services that's been operating related. But for real if this is like just an individual person and does this mistake, something may come terribly to his mind and we don't know what's gonna be the end of that story.

[decodx]

F2Pool have said they will hold the funds for three days and return them to the rightful owner  : https://nitter.cz/satofishi/status/1701042302238724512#m

Wow, that's some serious stuff. Just imagine being the developer who goofed up like that! I hope the person responsible can rest easy now that F2Pool is saying they'll give refund if anyone claims it.

But what if no one actually asks for the money? It could mean a couple of things. Either someone made the mistake intentionally and doesn't want to draw attention to it, or maybe they're totally unaware of the blunder.

[pawel7777]

F2Pool have said they will hold the funds for three days and return them to the rightful owner if claimed: https://nitter.cz/satofishi/status/1701042302238724512#m

That's bold, but I kind of expected that big pool like them will make an offer to refund, it's a good PR. Although I can imagine a lot of miners participating in their pool might not be happy about it. After all, it's their money, so any offers like that should be somehow agreed with them.

Can you imagine if this was found by a solo miner? lol, talk about winning the lottery: 26 bitcoins... above the reward given in 2013...

All solo-miners are good guys, I'm sure any of them would refund the fee.

Meanwhile, the story is making headlines in crypto-related news portals:

https://thecryptobasic.com/2023/09/11/future-of-finance-bitcoin-user-pays-jaw-dropping-19-bitcoin-in-transaction-fee/
https://www.financemagnates.com/trending/bitcoin-user-pays-outrageous-510000-transaction-fee/
https://u.today/bitcoin-user-just-paid-half-a-million-dollars-for-a-single-transaction
https://cryptoslate.com/bitcoin-users-costly-error-leads-to-record-transaction-fee-of-510000/
https://www.newsbtc.com/bitcoin-news/lost-in-transaction-bitcoin-user-overpaid-by-500000-for-a-200-deal/
https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2023/09/11/bitcoin-insane-fees-spent-transaction/
https://www.cryptopolitan.com/a-half-million-dollar-mistake-user-pays-500000-fee-for-a-200-bitcoin-transaction/

[joniboini]

Although I can imagine a lot of miners participating in their pool might not be happy about it. After all, it's their money, so any offers like that should be somehow agreed with them.

I don't see how practical it would be for them to ask every miner if they agree or not. It can also affect their image if they do a poll or something similar. I believe doing something like this would give them better PR and the user would likely give them a bonus instead. But yeah, we don't really know what is happening behind the scenes. Maybe the the user can't provide any proof and the money still belongs to the pool anyway.

or maybe they're totally unaware of the blunder.

It would be really odd if they never realized they received so little of their funds from doing a simple transaction.

[philipma1957]

...  transaction with such enormous fee could be mined by other pool but they might have no option other than to lose money or mine it be themselves.

I already discard that theory, the TX was publicly broadcasted according to mempool.space data. The TX was match with the expected block.

According to blockchain

Broadcasted on 10 Sep 2023 5:02:56

And the block was mined:

Mined on September 10, 2023 5:10:01

Almost 7 minutes on mempool, that actually can be mined by anyone with some decent hash rate or some luck.

So if you want to launder some money you shouldn't use that way.

It is a moron mistake. Maybe they will refund it.

If i solo hit that block I would most likely publicly refund 95% of the fee.

[Lakai01]

It is a moron mistake. Maybe they will refund it.

If i solo hit that block I would most likely publicly refund 95% of the fee.

As @o_e_l_e_o wrote the transactions are clearly automated; it is highly likely that no one has intervened manually here. The only question is how this could happen ... a faulty code that only hits after ~60k transactions is of course possible, but especially such highly critical code parts are usually not used lightly in a productive environment.

However, I can't see any intention behind it at first glance, for money laundering or the like the process would be much too delicate. Of course, it is quite possible that the Bitcoins were "gotten rid of", but there would be much better ways to do that.

[DapanasFruit]

I am really wondering how come a person with having that amount of Bitcoin in his wallet be not so careful with this transaction. He must be so sleepy so as not see that he is actually paying a very large fees for a transaction that is just minuscule. Or he just be another ignorant crypto holder that is now paying a hefty tuition fee for this mistake. Now, am hoping that there can be some kind of a warning that will announce "tot tot" when you are about to pay a huge fees so one can check and recheck before letting the transaction go ahead.

[GreatArkansas]

I'm curious how this mistake is being made.
It is something related if you send a Bitcoin or do some transaction then you can update how many satoshi/byte you will use?

Bitcoin wallets must have some special feature that this incident will be prevented, it is huge money.

[NotATether]

I just don't know what to think in this case. Was the owner drunk or having some health issues? Maybe the wallet and funds were inherited by someone who has little knowledge about Bitcoin and was trying to make his first transaction. It could also be a human error from someone knowledgeable. I think is ethical for the F2Pool to refund the funds after deducting some expenses, doing that will make their reputation rise in the industry. As the story unfolds I just hope it has a good ending and that the funds are returned to the owner.

Most wallets do not let you specify the absolute fee of the transaction, and only the fee rate in satoshis (per vbyte), so a truly careless person would have to somehow shove 10 zeroes into the fee rate or had automated the transaction, because this is bordering on the line of recklessness otherwise. I don't see how someone can accidentially pay $500k in fees otherwise.