A recent Bitcoin transaction made headlines for an extraordinary reason – it featured a hefty transaction fee of 19 BTC, equivalent to $509,563. Surprisingly, someone paid this fee for transferring a mere 0.074 BTC. Additionally, a post associated with F2Pool showed they would set aside the fee for three days before distributing it to miners if unclaimed.
This is not the first time something like this would occur. Between June 10 and 11, 2020, someone paid $2.6 million to transfer ETH, in a transaction supposed to cost $0.50 to a few dollars, even for huge transfers. At the time, the owner of the wallet reached out to F2Pool- the mining pool that processed the said transaction- and managed to prove experiencing a “malicious attack on his node wallet” As a result, F2Pool returned 90% of the ETH gas price to the original owner; using the remaining 10% to sponsor a one-week period of ETH zero-fees mining.
It’s worth noting that the average Bitcoin transaction fee has significantly dropped since March, currently averaging around $2.176, down from a peak of nearly $60. This reduction is likely due to factors such as decreased network congestion, stemming from unstable market conditions in the last few months.
Some speculators have suggested that a technical error or misconfiguration in the transaction software may have caused the exorbitant fee. Similarly, advocates of alternative networks are using this as an opportunity to voice their criticism of Bitcoin.
However, Glassnode data revealed that users created 717,331 new Bitcoin addresses on September 9, marking a significant milestone for the digital currency in the past five years, despite the frustration caused by high transaction fees and the scalability debate.
https://twitter.com/ali_charts/status/1700945458502258712?s=19
Meanwhile, Individual investors have shown impressive engagement in Bitcoin transactions. Despite this milestone, Bitcoin’s price has remained stable, trading at $25,827 as of the last 24 hours with minimal fluctuations— a more than 50% drop from its all-time-high in November, 2021
