Bitcoin is frequently criticised for having high transaction fees but this month saw Paxos pay a fee over $500,000 for a transaction of a mere $2,000 in BTC. Fortunately for Paxos, F2Pool, the miner of block 807,057 which contained the transaction acknowledged the error and agreed to refund the fees in full a few days later in block 807,732.
It just goes to show that no matter whether you’re new to crypto or are in the business costly mistakes can happen.
But is this the largest fee paid for any transaction in Bitcoin’s history? In terms of BTC no, that honour goes to a transaction in 2016 when a fee of over 291 BTC was paid to transfer a mere 0.0001 BTC! Around this time BTC was around $460, therefore this fee was worth approximately $133,860; all to transfer just 50c in Bitcoin.
Over the course of Bitcoin’s history there has been four transactions with fees higher than 100 BTC, the previously mentioned example as well as one on the 12th December 2011 (block 157235; fee almost 172 BTC), another on 10th January 2013 (block 215936; fee 111 BTC) and 28th August 2013 (block 254642; 200 BTC).
The table below provides the highest fees paid per year since Bitcoin’s genesis block.
| 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 |
| 4.32 | 171.79 | 67.50 | 200 | 27.72 | 85.89 | 291.24 |
| 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 (Partial) |
| 50 | 4.70 | 1.99 | 3.49 | 1.83 | 3.45 | 19.82 |
