On-chain data shows a Bitcoin whale has just made a transaction with a network fee of a whopping $3.1 million attached.

According to data from the cryptocurrency transaction tracker service Whale Alert, someone has executed a transfer with a record amount of fees on the BTC blockchain today.

The transaction, which involved a movement of 55.76 BTC (worth just under $2.1 million at the time of the transfer), paid a fee of 83.65 BTC (over $3.1 million) to the network.

The fees here naturally refer to the transaction fees that all senders on the Bitcoin network have to attach with their transfers as a reward for the miners who process them.

How much fees a user might have to attach with their transfer for it to go through swiftly depends on the traffic conditions present on the network at the time.

In times of high blockchain activity, the average fees can soar, so a holder looking to move their coins ASAP may have to pay a considerable amount.

Recently, the Bitcoin network has been quite active, not just because of the rally but also due to Inscriptions making a comeback. The average transaction fees have thus naturally spiked, as data from YCharts shows.

Even so, the fees are only around $10.5, certainly nothing as absurd as more than $3 million. So, then, what’s going on here? Why did this transaction carry such a large amount of fees?

Most likely, the sender just made a mistake, as is usually the case with outlier transfers like these. Back in September, stablecoin issuer Paxos had made a transaction with a fee of over $500,000 by error, the highest-ever fee on the network before this latest transaction smashed the record.

F2Pool, the mining pool responsible for handling the transaction, returned the transaction fees, recognizing the mistake on Paxos’ part. According to Blockchain.com, Antpool is the miner behind the latest transaction.

It’s possible that a similar arrangement would happen in the case of this apparent mistake as well, but so far, there has been no comment from the side of the mining pool. The sender of the transfer is also yet to publicly come forth.

Speaking of miners, they have been making bank deposits recently because of the network spike in total transaction fees due to the factors mentioned earlier. It’s no wonder these chain validators have aggressively decided to expand their total computing power, the “hashrate,” in this boon time.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at around $37,200, up 1% in the past week.

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