According to on-chain data, on September 10, a Bitcoin user spent as much as 19 BTC, approximately $510,000, in transaction fees for transferring just 0.074 BTC, worth less than $2,000.
The average transaction fee on the blockchain network at the time of writing was $2,176 per facts from ycharts.com. Per mempool, the user overpaid for the transaction more than 480,000 times, making the fee the highest ever recorded on the Bitcoin network.
Jameson Lopp, the co-founder of CasaHODL, who analyzed The incident noted that the fat finger error may have been due to buggy software from an exchange or payment processor address.
According to Lopp, the address received and sent more than 60,000 transactions and likely miscalculated the change output, causing errors in transaction fees.
“The address in question that made the error in calculating the fees has the characteristics of a hot wallet of a withdrawal-only company. It appears that it only occasionally receives deposits from one address to top up the balance,” Lopp said added.
Chun Wang, co-founder of F2Pool, said the 20 BTC fee will be temporarily held. The user responsible for the transaction has three days to claim these charges. However, if no one comes forward to claim them, miners will redistribute the compensation.
This decision aims to address unclaimed compensation fairly and equitably.
Interestingly enough it is appears the user did not notice the error as he is still sending transactions from the wallet.
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