Bitcoin User Just Paid Half a Million Dollars for a Single Transaction

[Orpichukwu]

Just happened to jump into this right now
https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1700920065934213256
A bitcoin user who happens to pay 19 BTC for a single transaction which the transaction is worth less which is a total of 0.0740544BTC.

My question here is:
1. What are the possible reason for such kind of mistake, was this as a result of custom fee configuration where the user was trying to customize the fee to execute the transaction faster and made a mistake of inputting the fee in place of transacted amount and amount to be transacted on the fee option.

2. Could there be able possible way of recovering from such an incident? Can those fee be returned to the person by the miners? Or let him just consider everything as his lose and live with it.

It’s really disheartening to read such a story, as this could really be a big lose to the sender as this is worth more than half a million dollars.

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[Bitcoin Smith]

Already we have a thread regarding this transaction, so you can find relevant answers there.
Ouch, today someone made a transaction with over $500k fee.

1. It appears to be a legitimate mistake not trying to launder the money via mining which is mostly the other possibility.

2. Yes, miners can return the excess fee if they wish and it happened on very few occasions.

[Kakmakr]

Well, in most cases it might be a "human" error.. where they did not check the fee and they just clicked in a hurry. I hope this gets enough attention, so that the Pool or possibly individual who mined this, could refund the person or entity who paid this.

It has happened to me before, where I did not notice the high fee and I paid $1000 in miners fee... for a low transaction amount. I was in a hurry, so I just clicked the default options. 

[EL MOHA]

My question here is:
1. What are the possible reason for such kind of mistake, was this as a result of custom fee configuration where the user was trying to customize the fee to execute the transaction faster and made a mistake of inputting the fee in place of transacted amount and amount to be transacted on the fee option.

This is definitely the obvious reason, Maybe he might have decided to use use 19satoshi and the rate was actually on bitcoin and ended been a bitcoin. This is seriously a costly mistake and could happen to anybody not just someone lacking knowledge Because I don’t believe just a random user could actually have all this bitcoin in their possession if they weren’t knowledgeable

2. Could there be able possible way of recovering from such an incident? Can those fee be returned to the person by the miners? Or let him just consider everything as his lose and live with it.

Yes there is possibility of getting a return from a the miner, they have been reports before of cases like this. Hopefully if the story trends and it is mined by a reputable miner and they wish to return then they could to the sending address. But if they don’t we can’t actually blame them.


Edit: you can lock the thread since there is a thread about it already

[Ever-young]

Well, in most cases it might be a "human" error.. where they did not check the fee and they just clicked in a hurry. I hope this gets enough attention, so that the Pool or possibly individual who mined this, could refund the person or entity who paid this.

I don’t see this as a mere error which could just occur any how, can this even happen? Or are their wallets which are programmed to make such a mistake on their own, because all the wallets which I have used before users I have never come across fees which are higher than the transacted amount, unless the sender is the person who will use their hand to increase the fee by itself, maybe that’s where this error can come in.

[logfiles]

1. It appears to be a legitimate mistake not trying to launder the money via mining which is mostly the other possibility.

The topic of laundering always comes up whenever we see such abnormal transaction fees whether on bitcoin network or other chains but to be honest, I would like to know how this works.

How does one Launder money via transaction fees if they don't even know the next pool or solo miner to confirm the block?

[FatFork]

1. It appears to be a legitimate mistake not trying to launder the money via mining which is mostly the other possibility.

The topic of laundering always comes up whenever we see such abnormal transaction fees whether on bitcoin network or other chains but to be honest, I would like to know how this works.

How does one Launder money via transaction fees if they don't even know the next pool or solo miner to confirm the block?

Right. This could only work if the pool had internally included the transaction in their block. However, I find it unlikely in this case because the transaction was publicly broadcast, so F2Pool would have no way of knowing who will mine that block. Besides, Chun Wang from F2Pool already stated that he will put these 20 BTC on hold for now and wait three days for the owner to claim them.

[ImThour]

Seems like a user's own mistake, no way any user-interface will ever make this mistake for anyone in this world. I am really sad for the user, I mean that's literally half a million dollars and that amount can change the life of anyone living in any country in this entire world. I wish he was wealthy enough to take this loss easily and I hope that wasn't the only money he ever had. If that's the case, then it will be very difficult to survive knowing what mistake you did. I wish him all the best.

[logfiles]

Right. This could only work if the pool had internally included the transaction in their block. However, I find it unlikely in this case because the transaction was publicly broadcast, so F2Pool would have no way of knowing who will mine that block. Besides, Chun Wang from F2Pool already stated that he will put these 20 BTC on hold for now and wait three days for the owner to claim them.

Hoping the victim sees the tweet within the 3-day window, it would really be quite a relief, or perhaps Craig Wright will show up to claim it 

[sheenshane]

2. Could there be able possible way of recovering from such an incident? Can those fee be returned to the person by the miners? Or let him just consider everything as his lose and live with it.

Based on the article someone speculates it's come from a buggy software wallet or it could be from an exchange.
So it's very risky to use a wallet like that might experience a painful mistake that could hurt on mistake.

I wanted to know now what wallet it is and to avoid it in the future, I believe this mistake is unforgettable to someone who did this, and good thing to know that the F2pool considers this as a mistake and has a grace period that the sender have an opportunity to reclaim the funds.

A lesson to learn about this, avoid rushing through transactions, especially when dealing with large amounts.
Always check the network status through mempool.space.

[BVeyron]

Just happened to jump into this right now
https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1700920065934213256
A bitcoin user who happens to pay 19 BTC for a single transaction which the transaction is worth less which is a total of 0.0740544BTC.

My question here is:
1. What are the possible reason for such kind of mistake, was this as a result of custom fee configuration where the user was trying to customize the fee to execute the transaction faster and made a mistake of inputting the fee in place of transacted amount and amount to be transacted on the fee option.

2. Could there be able possible way of recovering from such an incident? Can those fee be returned to the person by the miners? Or let him just consider everything as his lose and live with it.

It’s really disheartening to read such a story, as this could really be a big lose to the sender as this is worth more than half a million dollars.

I think that the danger of facing such situation depends on the soft he was using to make transaction. I don't think that there are some ways to recover the money... At least with this legal status of cryptocurrencies and under these circumstances of money loss. Also, this transaction could be vital for him (to pay for something urgent).

[adaseb]

Turns out it was PayPal which made this mistake.

They said it today. Which is going to make you think twice about using them to store your crypto. For a company which was suppose to be secure they are doing a very poor job of handling their crypto.

Either way, $500K is a small amount to them so they will be fine.

[Charles-Tim]

1. What are the possible reason for such kind of mistake, was this as a result of custom fee configuration where the user was trying to customize the fee to execute the transaction faster and made a mistake of inputting the fee in place of transacted amount and amount to be transacted on the fee option.

You can read about what that happened on this link: https://cointelegraph.com/news/paxos-confirms-responsible-for-500k-mistaken-bitcoin-transaction. The mistake was from Paxos.

2. Could there be able possible way of recovering from such an incident? Can those fee be returned to the person by the miners? Or let him just consider everything as his lose and live with it.

This is not the first time that this kind of mistake has happened. With the ones that were publicly known that the sender requested for a return, the miner that mine the block returned the coins back in the past.

Turns out it was PayPal which made this mistake.

According to the news that I reead, it was a mistake from Paxos.

“Paxos overpaid the BTC network fee on Sept. 10, 2023. This only impacted Paxos corporate operations. Paxos clients and end users have not been affected and all customer funds are safe. This was due to a bug on a single transfer and it has been fixed. Paxos is in contact with the miner to recoup the funds.”

[DapanasFruit]

According to the news that I reead, it was a mistake from Paxos.

“Paxos overpaid the BTC network fee on Sept. 10, 2023. This only impacted Paxos corporate operations. Paxos clients and end users have not been affected and all customer funds are safe. This was due to a bug on a single transfer and it has been fixed. Paxos is in contact with the miner to recoup the funds.”

So this is not coming from someone who is just starting in cryptocurrency who happens to be very rich. It is just amazing to see  this kind of error happening all because this happens to be Paxos. Well, am hoping they are learning this big lesson and let's see if the miner or the miner pool will eventually return such a huge amount for a single transaction.  

[CryptSafe]

This is why it is advised to properly cross check your information or details accurately before proceeding with any transaction payment or otherwise. I believe this to be a costly mistake by the sender. It is possible that the sender probably might not be in a stable state of mind because I see no reason why such an amount would go in for such a transaction with fees much lower than it is.
On the aspect of returning the transaction fee, I think that is under probability because it would be assumed by the miner that the sender wanted the transaction to scale up much faster so therefore decided to increase the fee. To think of the miner returning the fee I don't think that would be feasible.

Of it truly happens that such mistake is coming from paxos,  I doubt if the miner would agree because exchange has so far ripped many people of their assets and when it happens like this the reverse is always the case. This is likely a 50/50 scenario for both parties.

[NotATether]

Turns out it was PayPal which made this mistake.

According to the news that I reead, it was a mistake from Paxos.

“Paxos overpaid the BTC network fee on Sept. 10, 2023. This only impacted Paxos corporate operations. Paxos clients and end users have not been affected and all customer funds are safe. This was due to a bug on a single transfer and it has been fixed. Paxos is in contact with the miner to recoup the funds.”

Very strange indeed.

I wonder how the speculation which circulated about it being Paypal overpaying on fees came about.

Arguably the fact that it was Paxos that screwed up here is even worse IMO, because Paxos is already skating on thin ice. First they were ordered to stop minting BUSD, effectively killing it, and now they are acting similar to crypto.com's transfer negligence. Makes you bring their financial stability in question even.

[jrrsparkles]

Arguably the fact that it was Paxos that screwed up here is even worse IMO, because Paxos is already skating on thin ice. First they were ordered to stop minting BUSD, effectively killing it, and now they are acting similar to crypto.com's transfer negligence. Makes you bring their financial stability in question even.

Paxos claims that they are bringing millions of users to the crypto market but in reality, they don't even have a secured system to handle withdrawal and how good their fee calculation system is.

Maybe after this incident, Paypal will look for alternate brokerage partners and this kind of negligence is completely unacceptable from some company that claims to provide secure crypto services.

[Hamza2424]

It appears this topic has already been addressed by one of the senior members, so I'd like to recommend checking the previously created discussions before revisiting it.

Now, regarding the potential reasons and outcomes of this incident, I believe there are a few possibilities to consider. Firstly, it's possible that the individual who mistakenly set the fees made an error during the customization process. Occasionally, UI bugs can also be responsible for such errors, although instances where the UI fails to accurately register user input are rare. Aside from these two reasons, other possibilities seem to have a very low likelihood, perhaps around 0.01%.

As for the prospects of recovery, I cannot provide a definitive answer. However, in the past, there was a more surprising event where an 80BTC fee was paid, and there were recovery options offered. I don't have extensive knowledge of that specific case, so I recommend conducting a thorough investigation to ensure there's no plagiarism involved when discussing this incident.

[coolcoinz]

Very strange indeed.

I wonder how the speculation which circulated about it being Paypal overpaying on fees came about.

Arguably the fact that it was Paxos that screwed up here is even worse IMO, because Paxos is already skating on thin ice. First they were ordered to stop minting BUSD, effectively killing it, and now they are acting similar to crypto.com's transfer negligence. Makes you bring their financial stability in question even.

According bitcoinmagazine.com this was a bug in transaction and they're in contact with the miner who received the fees. The mistake was on PayPal's side. They're in contact with the miner and it's possible Paxos will get it back, or at least most of it. So the news about PayPal not Paxos being responsible seems to be true, even though it was Paxos that actually sent the money.

"All evidence now points to a software bug like this as the cause of the error," Mononautical said. "I really feel for the developer who wrote that code - it's such an easy mistake to make, and it should have been caught in review."
Furthermore, the entire system was running "completely unmonitored," as PayPal failed to notice or halt the erroneous withdrawals for nearly 24 hours.

[cafter]

this exact topic of thread is discussed over here and discussion is already reached about 5 pages, so please OP lock this thread so we do not reply same thread twice or read sample post twice.
or you can move it to trash or archival.