An Unknown User Incurs More Than $80,000 in Transaction Fees When Sending BTC Worth $1

An unknown person incurred a transaction fee of more than $80,000 or (3.49079570 bitcoins) when transferring bitcoin worth $1.16. According to Blockchain.com, the December 19 transaction, which is included in block 662052, had an input of 3.49084570 bitcoin and an output of 0.00005000 bitcoin.

As one report explains, the unusually high fee may have been the result of an “error made by the bitcoin user when manually constructing the transaction details.” However, as Alex Lebed the head of development at Xsigma Defi tells news.Bitcoin.com, this may have happened “because certain wallets allow you to spend unlimited transaction fees in order to boost your transaction with the miners.”

Emphasizing that this is technically possible, Lebed explains this practice is done to “fund the transaction in a mining pool of your choice, making it a priority.” Lebed then concludes:

Perhaps someone was testing the network. It’s unlikely that someone made the transaction by an accident, but it’s possible. In my opinion, it might have been a test.

Meanwhile, the large fee paid by the unknown person was incurred one day after the average transaction fee on the Bitcoin network topped $11.91. Data from Bitinfocharts shows that transaction fees on the network surpassed the $10 mark for the first time since November 5 when they peaked at $12.05.

However, after the brief surge, transaction fees had dropped to $6.15 by December 20. Nevertheless, transaction fees on the network remain higher than they were at the start of the year. On January 1, the average fee on the Bitcoin network was $0.33 and for the next four months, it remained below $1.

Since the beginning of May 2020, BTC network fees surpassed the one dollar level and they have largely stayed above that level since then.

What are your thoughts on this high transaction fee? You can share your views in the comments section below.

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