Biggest Fee Oddities in the Crypto World
Cryptocurrency transaction fees are not supposed to be too high. But sometimes, due to human errors or other mistakes crypto fees could be too high. Fee oddities are not too scarce.
cintjournal admin
With the help of the Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, people can send money anywhere in the world with a click of a button. However, much like any other money transfer, transferring money using crypto involves fees.
Different cryptocurrencies use different Blockchain networks. Depending on the asset and the network used, the transfer might take a longer time and a higher fee.
Some wallets and platforms offer users the option to choose the fee for the transaction. So, users can choose to pay a higher fee for a faster transaction.
This could result in some erroneous digit inputs. For instance, if someone wants to send 10 Bitcoins with a fee of 0.01, they might accidentally put 10 for fee and just send 0.01 Bitcoin for a very hefty fee. There are some prominent examples of this type of mistake. We’ll go through them one by one.
Back in 2019, someone made three Ethereum transaction and as their fee, he paid 420, 210, and 2100 Ethereum coins respectively. So, in total, three transactions cost him 2,730 ETH.
Given the price of Ethereum at the time, the total sum of the fees amounted to 365,800 dollars. And that’s only given the price of Ethereum at that time. ETH has increased in value so much since then. This means, given today’s price, this fee would be insanely high. In fact, it would be over 5 million dollars!
But lucky for the sender, the mining pool that was involved reached out to him and attempted to fix the issue. As a result he was given back his Ethereum that was mistakenly sent as fee.
In the end, the sender sent a public Blockchain message stating, “Thank you SparkPool mining pool and your miners for helping us to recover our loss. We are willing to share half of 2100 ETH with the miners to thanks the miners’ integrity.”
The same issue also happens for Bitcoin and its users.
Back in 2020, a transaction was seen in the network of Bitcoin showing a transaction worth 0.00005 BTC with a fee of 3.49 BTC. Even with the price of Bitcoin at the time, the fee was tens of thousands of dollars.
Another example of Bitcoin also took place in 2020. A transaction worth only 0.01 BTC was made with a fee of 2.66 BTC. Again, given the price of Bitcoin at the time, which was around 23,000 dollars, the fee for the mentioned transaction was tens of thousands of dollars as well.
Most of such transactions, that usually involve a low amount with an incredibly high fee, took place due to mistakes. Therefore, being cautious is extremely important in the Blockchain world.
Also, educating ourselves and others who are involved in the crypto domain and make transactions regularly, could help reduce the potential for such mistakes to take place.
