A Bitcoin user accidentally paid nearly 0.75 BTC in transaction fees, worth around $60,000, after making a panic-driven error on April 8, 2025.
A Bitcoin user accidentally paid nearly 0.75 BTC in transaction fees, worth around $60,000, after making a panic-driven error on April 8, 2025. This mistake occurred when the user tried to use the replace-by-fee (RBF) feature to adjust an unconfirmed transaction. The user’s initial transaction featured a conservative fee, but after realizing the first transaction was unlikely to be processed in time, they attempted to replace it with a higher fee. However, in their rush, they ended up setting the fee much too high, leading to the overpayment.
The second RBF transaction sent out a total of 0.75 BTC, which included 0.48 Bitcoin (worth about $37,770) and 0.2 BTC of change (valued at $16,357). Anmol Jain, vice president of investigations at AMLBot, explained that this likely stemmed from a typo or mistake when setting the transaction fee. Jain speculated that the user intended to set the fee to 30.5692 satoshis but accidentally typed 305,692 satoshis, which caused the wallet to calculate a fee far higher than expected.
The issue may have been further compounded by the user failing to adjust the change address properly. This led to nearly 0.75 BTC being sent as part of the fee. It’s also possible that the user misunderstood how the Bitcoin wallet sets fees, leading to an overcorrection when they tried to increase the fee to get the transaction confirmed faster.
RBF is a controversial feature in Bitcoin. It allows users to increase the fee of an unconfirmed transaction to incentivize miners to include it in a block. However, the feature has been criticized for potentially causing double-spending. Bitcoin Cash, for example, removed RBF from its network, asserting that unconfirmed transactions are final and secure. Some Bitcoin developers believe RBF is necessary for speeding up transactions, but its implementation can lead to costly mistakes if users do not fully understand how to set fees correctly.
In this case, the user’s second transaction is unlikely to be confirmed because the higher-fee transaction took precedence, meaning the original and intermediate transactions will likely never be processed. This incident highlights the risks associated with RBF and underscores the importance of careful transaction management in the volatile world of cryptocurrency.
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