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Someone just paid 3150 ETH ($450k) in ETH transaction fees

chepicap.com 19 February 2019 19:13, UTC

A recent transaction on the Ethereum (ETH) network attracted the attention of the crypto community. A user paid 3150 ETH in transaction fees for 3 transactions, and there is a discussion about what might have motivated the payment of such a huge sum.

Worth around $450,000 at current market prices, this 2150 ETH transaction fees are significantly more than would normally be needed to get priority for a transaction, even one as small as 0.15 ETH. The ETH reward appears to have been picked up by a Chinese mining pool, Sparkpool.

Ooooooooops!

Looks like some poor dev just paid 3,150 ETH ($450k) in transaction fees.https://t.co/IAHU3ylY33 https://t.co/6LEA3smeOJ https://t.co/M0LztSyWo7
— Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) February 19, 2019

The general consensus on Reddit seems to be that this was likely a mistake of some kind. Some are claiming it might have been an incredibly costly human error, with someone maybe confusing GAS with ETH, and discussing what this says about the state of crypto. Others have pointed out that this was sent from an account that is very active, and so is unlikely to make such a mistake. The trade may have executed automatically, and the huge transaction cost may have been the result of some kind of programming error.

A UI problem for the wallet they used to send the ETH perhaps.
— Biht Coign (@abztrdr) February 19, 2019

A further hypothesis is that this transaction fee was sent as a way to cook the books or launder money, possibly by a mining operation. The same account was found to have previously sent out other similarly large sums. The amount being transferred from one account to another could be a way to disguise the origin of funds. Many have countered that this is unlikely, as there is a risk that the miners wouldn't successfully mine the block, and would lose their money to someone else.

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