Bitfinex Just Spent $23.7 Million In Fees To Transfer 100,000 USDT In A Single Ethereum Transaction

Crypto exchange Bitfinex just paid $23.7 million in transaction fees to send $100,000 of tether (USDT) in what was presumably a bit of a slip up. 

The exchange made the transaction few hours ago, according to block explorer Etherscan. The transaction was sent from one of Bitfinex’s main wallets and the money ended up at one of Deversifi’s wallets — a non-custodial exchange that was spun out of Bitfinex in 2019.

“At 11:10 UTC on the 27th September a deposit transaction was made using a hardware wallet from the main DeversiFi user interface with an erroneously high gas fee,” said DeversiFi on Twitter.

At 11:10 UTC on the 27th September a deposit transaction was made using a hardware wallet from the main DeversiFi user interface with an erroneously high gas fee.https://t.co/OpSHkkFiBo

— DeversiFi ? (@deversifi) September 27, 2021

“DeversiFi is currently investigating the cause to determine how this occurred and will keep you updated. No customer funds on DeversiFi are at risk and this is an internal issue for DeversiFi to resolve. Operations are unaffected,” they added.

DeversiFi is currently investigating the cause to determine how this occurred and will keep you updated.

No customer funds on DeversiFi are at risk and this is an internal issue for DeversiFi to resolve. Operations are unaffected.

— DeversiFi ? (@deversifi) September 27, 2021

The transaction was a smart contract interaction with the amount of tether sent to one wallet before being passed along to Deversifi’s wallet. It used the newly implemented EIP-1559 type of transaction, which was designed to make Ethereum fees easier to predict.

The transaction was included in a block that was mined by an unknown Ethereum miner, who ranks in the top ten miners by blocks mined over the last seven days.

This may be the largest Ethereum transaction fee ever paid in dollar terms. Previous notable occasions include two transactions that were made in June 2020 that added up to $5.2 million in fees.