A cryptocurrency trader has paid a whopping $92,000 to move around $2,300 worth of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization Ethereum ($ETH) on the blockchain.
According to blockchain data from Etherscan, first spotted by on-chain investigator DeFiac on the microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter), the trader paid around $90,000 in fees for a simple Ethereum transaction.
Someone just burned ~$90k on tx fee for a simple eth transfer. pic.twitter.com/R9beCnNZv1
— DeFiac (@TheDEFIac) August 11, 2024
Data from BitInfoCharts shows that the average Ethereum transaction fee is currently of around $2.1, far from the transaction fee paid by the user on its transaction and even far from the transaction fee’s all-time high of around $200 in May 2022.
DeFiac said the transaction is unlikely to be related to potential money laundering, as the network validator that processed the block the transaction was included in was Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.
As a result, the investigator suggested the transaction was a result of “just a fatfinger,” that cost the trader over $90,000 in fees. The trader, he added, has been active since December 2017, when Ethereum was trading at around $450.
Per his words, for users to avoid making such a mistake they should use a wallet that helps manage transaction fees, and if transactions are being generated through a script, he recommended users simulate their transactions on a fork of the network before processing them on the mainnet.
The transaction comes at a time in which Ethereum has been significantly underperforming Bitcoin, with the ETH/BTC ratio, a key indicator of the relative strength of the two cryptocurrencies, plummeting to its lowest level since April 2021, reaching a precarious 0.044.
According to data shared by leading institutional digital asset data provider CCData, ETH has been consistently underperforming Bitcoin. Meanwhile ETH rival Solana has bucked the trend, with the SOL/ETH ratio steadily climbing to now be near a new all-time high.
Chart of the Week: #Ethereum has significantly underperformed vs #Bitcoin, with the ETH/BTC ratio reaching its lowest level since April 2021, at 0.044.Meanwhile, the SOL/ETH ratio continues to trend upwards, nearing its all-time high. pic.twitter.com/fZxeHpoQpL
— CCData (@CCData_io) August 6, 2024
Featured image via Pixabay.