Bitcoin Sender Struck With $3.1M Transaction Fee, Largest in History

Someone paid $3.1 million in transaction fees for a bitcoin (BTC) transfer on Thursday. Bitcoin miner Antpool was rewarded for mining the block. It received the standard 6.25 BTC as well as 85.2163 BTC in fees for all transactions included in the block, on-chain data shows.

Today’s transfer, mined in block 818087, becomes the largest transaction fee paid in bitcoin’s 14-year history.

The sender’s wallet was set up just minutes before the transfer, and the recipient received only 55.78 BTC of the original 139.42 BTC that was sent.

In September, F2Pool returned a 19.8 BTC fee that was mistakenly sent by Paxos. AntPool, a mining pool owned by Bitmain, has not published an announcement in relation to the overpaid fee.

Recently, bitcoin fees have experienced a significant uptick following increased activity around Bitcoin-based NFT project Ordinals. However, this transaction appears to be an individual error instead of a wider market impact.

Antpool did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.