Unlucky Bitcoin user has recently surpassed the all time record for highest dollar value ever paid as Bitcoin transaction fee.

The anonymous user, who is believed to be large private holder of Bitcoin, sent 55.77 BTC and paid 83 BTC transaction fee. This is over 13 times the amount miners would normally get as generation block reward (6.25 BTC) and 6 times more than previous record, which also happened in 2023 when cryptocurrency firm Paxos accidentally paid $0.5 million transaction fee in September.

Anyone participating in Bitcoin network is free to choose transaction fee as high or low as they wish. If fee is set too low, they risk having transaction ignored and not included in mined blocks. If fee is high, mining pools will prioritize your transaction and it will be included in the next Bitcoin block within minutes, however, there is certain fee threshold above which any extra money spent will yield no speedup. This threshold has historically been between 50 cents and $10-50, depending on how "congested" the Bitcoin network is at any given time.

Incidents like these highlight the unforgiving nature of blockchains and self custody of cryptocurrencies. Once you make a mistake, there will be nobody to help you fix it - it simply is impossible to undo.

This perceived "downside" of Bitcoin to me actually seems like a worthy trade-off, because the upside of having irreversible, uncensorable transfer of value is far greater than danger of accidental loss.