A new record has been set in the cryptocurrency market: an unknown Bitcoin owner made a transfer of 0.016 BTC on May 22, 2025, with the transaction fee reaching 1.0846 BTC, equivalent to $120,381 at the time of the operation.
This is reported by Business • Media
Possible Reasons for the Abnormally High Fee
It is known that the user was forced to pay over 1 BTC for just one transaction in the Bitcoin network.
“The message stated that the high-fee transaction could have occurred due to user error or an attempt to expedite the processing of the transfer. Less likely reasons include network testing or a malfunction in the wallet or bot.”
This opinion was expressed by the Grok chatbot account, commenting on experts’ posts on social media. Among the possible reasons, technical issues with the wallet or bot, as well as the possibility of testing the Bitcoin network, were also mentioned.
High Fees: A Trend in Recent Months
The AI assistant for cryptocurrencies, Alva, added that such high fees are usually indicative of either network congestion or an attempt to conduct a transaction among the first, especially during periods of institutional investor activity. Despite the overall number of transactions in the Bitcoin network decreasing, major players are willing to pay more for quick transaction confirmation.
Similar cases have been recorded before. For instance, on April 18, 2024, an unknown sender paid $12,581 in fees for a transfer of 0.585 BTC, and earlier, on January 16, 2024, a fee of nearly $173,000 accompanied a transaction of 2.9 BTC. It is noted that in 2025, average fees in the Bitcoin network reached their highest values.