[HN Gopher] Someone pays $500k fee to send $1,865
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       Someone pays $500k fee to send $1,865
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2023-09-11 19:24 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (web3isgoinggreat.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (web3isgoinggreat.com)
        
       | sp332 wrote:
       | To be clear, it's not that someone asked for this fee. You put
       | fees on a transaction to incentivize miners to include your
       | transaction in the next block. So I don't think there was a scam
       | here.
        
         | baseballdork wrote:
         | Agreed, likely a software bug. However, I'm not sure if that's
         | better or worse.
        
       | Raed667 wrote:
       | "I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place, I always
       | mess up some mundane detail" - Office space
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | In this case it's probably not a fat-finger and more likely to
         | be a software bug. The popular clients have warnings against
         | against absurd fees, and even if you're crafting your own
         | transactions (which might lead to absurdly high fees if you
         | don't neglected to have "change" outputs), bitcoin core will
         | check for this when you're trying to broadcast the
         | transaction[1].
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/rpc/sendrawtransacti...
        
           | Raed667 wrote:
           | the quote from the film also talks about a software bug ;)
        
       | cypress66 wrote:
       | This is not that uncommon.
       | 
       | The miner signs a tx with that insane fee, but intentionally
       | doesn't broadcast it (so nobody can include that tx but
       | themselves).
       | 
       | When he finds a block, that tx is included and he's basically
       | paying himself.
       | 
       | It's mostly done for the memes.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | dotcoma wrote:
       | But it was almost as fast as using a credit card! ;)
        
       | fatfingerd wrote:
       | Is it possible this was a form of laundering or insider theft?
       | I.e. could the intended transaction not have actually been
       | broadcast to all miners?
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | You'd have to ensure that miner can score a block in a
         | reasonable time. That would be a lot of hassle with a setup
         | likely worth over 500k. Not impossible, but really unlikely.
         | 
         | (Also that reward went to the f2pool's publicly known address
         | https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/99451c2...
         | - so that wouldn't make sense as a destination, because it gets
         | split between lots of miners)
        
           | fatfingerd wrote:
           | I'd think an insider could keep a transaction hanging at any
           | given time in many accounts payable situations, but taking
           | all that risk to share a tiny portion of a pool would be
           | pretty silly..
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | nine_k wrote:
       | It looks to me much like the way to sell marijuana by selling an
       | old newspaper for $50 with a packet of weed as a free gift with
       | it.
       | 
       | I suppose that $1865 is a reasonably small price to send $500k to
       | someone concealed as a service charge.
        
         | Badumtss8 wrote:
         | I've no experience with crypto but a lot with UI. Is it
         | possible that they were trying to send 500K for 1865 and
         | entered the numbers in the wrong inputs ? Software asked them
         | to confirm. They saw the correct digits and pressed ok.
        
           | senkora wrote:
           | IIRC, bitcoin transactions are structured to always send the
           | entire wallet balance every time, and the way to avoid doing
           | that is to send almost all of the money back to the current
           | wallet address in a self loop. Then, any money that isn't
           | listed with a destination becomes the miner fee.
           | 
           | So they may have just forgotten to add the field that sends
           | the money in a self-loop, and by default the account was
           | drained by the miner fee.
           | 
           | This is obviously a terrible design but it can't be changed.
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | That's not how it works. You can't guarantee where the fee
         | goes. It's assigned pretty much randomly to some miner or a
         | pool.
        
           | lgats wrote:
           | Unless the transaction is only advertised to the miner they
           | intend and they wait until that miner finds a block?
        
             | viraptor wrote:
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473536
        
       | mortureb wrote:
       | Does this mean some random miner just got a windfall?
        
         | xhkkffbf wrote:
         | Yes.
        
       | sschueller wrote:
       | Edit: OK I did not see the "k" after the 500, that's insane.
       | 
       | Well the euronet atm I just used wanted EUR 9.99 im fees to
       | withdraw EUR 40.
       | 
       | Not as bad but also kind of ridiculous.
       | 
       | At least I can still opt out of the convertion and pay the
       | ridiculous transaction fee of EUR 3.95 to have my bank convert
       | the EUR 40 to CHF.
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-11 22:02 UTC)