Bitcoin Mistake: Exorbitant Transaction Fee Costs User $170,000
A costly error in a Bitcoin transaction has left one user significantly out of pocket, with a transaction fee of $170,000 paid unnecessarily. The blockchain data reveals that the user sent only 2.9 BTC, while the attached fee amounted to a staggering 4 BTC, over 133% of the transaction’s value.
The overpayment amounted to a factor of 29,992 times the standard transaction fee, with the user paying 1,800,890 satoshis per vByte (sat/vB) instead of the regular 60 sat/vB. This blunder serves as a reminder to consolidate Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) effectively, rather than converting them into unnecessary fees.
UTXOs are individual BTC transfers within a user’s wallet, and dividing them into small chunks can result in higher transaction fees later on. The intention behind the high-paying user’s actions was likely to consolidate their UTXOs, but unfortunately, it resulted in a substantial financial loss.
While Bitcoin transactions are typically irreversible, there have been instances where miners have returned overpaid fees. Notably, in previous cases, mining pools F2Pool and Antpool reimbursed users for accidental overpayments of $500,000 and $3.1 million, respectively. Whether this user will recover their lost Bitcoin remains to be seen.