A Bitcoin miner who received the 19.8 BTC in fees has returned the funds to blockchain infrastructure company Paxos after the company claimed to have paid over $500,000 in BTC transfer fees by error.
On September 10, the cryptocurrency community was perplexed by a BTC transaction that paid approximately $500,000 in fees to transfer roughly $2,000, while the average network fee was $2.
Some hypothesized that copy-pasting data completed the transaction and accidentally pasted an output into the fee box without verifying twice.
On September 13, Paxos announced that their server was responsible for the transmission. Following its assertion, the company reassured its customers that their funds were secure and belonged to Paxos.
Additionally, the company clarified that PayPal was not involved in the error and acknowledged that the blunder was its own.
After consenting to refund the amount to Paxos, the Bitcoin miner who received the funds vented his frustrations on X (previously Twitter) almost a day after Paxos’ claims. Most of the miner’s followers voted to distribute the funds to other Bitcoin miners when asked what they would do in his place.
However, this advice has yet to be followed. The funds were returned on September 15, according to blockchain information provided by Bitcoin explorer Mempool.
Transaction fee errors have previously cost thousands of dollars. In 2019, a user of Ethereum lost nearly $400,000 in Ether due to the mistake of pasting values into the incorrect fields. Sparkpool, an Ethereum mining pool, assisted the user in recovering half of the lost funds.
