When the price of Bitcoin goes up, the number of transactions also increases and consequently the time to confirm transactions. But at times like this, the network fees do not exceed hundreds of dollars, and even so, it is possible to define the priority of the transfer by paying more or less. It seems that a very unlucky investor defined the wrong values and ended up paying $ 47 thousand to move only $ 194.
According to public data from Blockchain, some unfortunate has paid a transaction fee much (really much) higher than the current standard of the network and even much higher than the amount transferred.
For a $ 194 transaction, a fee of $ 47,000 was paid. To give you an idea, at the current network level the fee is around $ 4.52. This makes this transaction itself more than 10,000,000% of the amount required.
According to information available on Blockchain, the mining company that mined the block was Huobi's specialized division. The transaction was registered at block height 657535.
What happened to the Bitcoin rate getting so high in the transaction?
Interestingly this is not such an unusual type of transaction, having already happened on other occasions. But the error is hardly in the network or in the protocol, but in what some call "fat finger", which is basically the most basic of human errors.
In many portfolios, you can (or even need) to set the fee amount for the transaction you are going to carry out. Sometimes the investor ends up not paying attention to the correct fields and puts the transfer fee in the fee and the fee in the transfer and thus the catastrophe happens.
It is very likely that the investor wanted to send $ 47,000 by paying a fee of $ 194, but he switched fields and made a very expensive mistake. And, as we know, it is impossible to reverse the transaction so that the money is returned. Certainly a very sad day for someone (and happy for the mining company).
But, while many may think that this is a major disadvantage of cryptocurrencies, it is worth remembering that Banks can make the same mistake and have a lot of difficulty in solving their own mistake.
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