According to Cointelegraph, Paxos has confirmed in a statement on September 13 that it was responsible for overpaying $500,000 in fees for a Bitcoin (BTC) transfer on September 10. The company assured that end users have not been affected and all user funds are safe. Paxos is known as the issuer of stablecoins, including PayPal USD (PYUSD) and Pax Dollar (USDP), and also operates a crypto brokerage firm that carries Bitcoin.
Prior to the statement, there was speculation on Twitter that PayPal may have been responsible for the transaction, due to a related wallet account identified by analytics platform OXT as belonging to PayPal. However, a Paxos representative clarified that PayPal was not responsible and the error was theirs. The company is now in contact with the miner to recoup the funds.
The mistaken transaction was first discovered on September 10, and the block containing the transaction was confirmed by Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool. The pool’s management offered to return the funds to whoever sent the transaction if a claim was made within three days, otherwise, the excessive fee would be paid out to the pool’s hash power contributors. Paxos is not the first crypto user or company to potentially pay thousands of dollars in fees due to a mistake, with similar incidents occurring in 2019 and 2020 involving Ethereum users.
