Bitfinex Paid $23.7M in Transaction Fees to Send $100K USDT

The wallet of crypto exchange Bitfinex recently paid $23.7 million in transaction fees for sending $100,000 in Tether (USDT) in an unfortunate oversight.

Bitfinex spinoff DeversiFi, a non-custodial exchange, reportedly handled the transaction on their platform, which provides access to DeFi protocols without paying gas fees. Apparently, Bitfinex pays the transaction fees through one of its main wallets, in which case they are footing the bill for the transaction.

DeversiFi Spokesperson said,

At 11:10 UTC on the 27th September a deposit transaction was made using a hardware wallet from the main DeversiFi user interface with an erroneously high gas fee.

Moreover, the matter is currently under investigation. They will provide an update to users when they know the cause. All customer funds on DeversiFi remain protected. This is an internal matter that DeversiFi needs to resolve.

The smart contract interaction involved transferring Tether to one wallet and sending it to a wallet of DeversiFi. It used the newly-implemented EIP-1559 transaction method, which makes the Ethereum fees more predictable.

Listed in a block mined by a top-ten Ethereum miner over the last seven days, this transaction may be the largest Ethereum transaction fee ever incurred in dollar terms. Other notable transactions include two that totaled $5.2 million in fees in June 2020. Recently, Tether and Bitfinex agreed to pay $18.5M to end the New York probe.