Massive $310 million-large BTC transaction made with only $0.32-large fee

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Updated on Mar 11, 2020

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New reports show a massive transaction of 44,000 BTC that was made yesterday, November 24th.
The interesting detail about the transaction is its incredibly small fee of only $0.32.
While crypto transactions usually are cheaper than those made through banks, whales still usually pay hundreds of dollars for major payments.

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Bitcoin whales are once again making headlines, this time with an unbelievably large transaction, as well as unbelievably small transaction fees.

According to a recent report, a crypto whale moved over $310 million in Bitcoin (44,000 BTC) yesterday, November 24th. While whales are known for moving huge amounts of cryptocurrency at once, this particular transaction stands out due to its incredibly small fee.

???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? 44,000 #BTC (310,280,282 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

Tx: https://t.co/GgIfMr9eMy
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— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) November 24, 2019

BTC fees have been growing higher and higher in recent years, as the number of users grew. Bitcoin blockchain’s inability to scale and meet the demand resulted in long waiting periods and higher transaction fees resulted in faster processing of the transaction.

However, this particular transaction, as massive as it is, resulted in a small $0.32 (0.00004551 BTC) fee. The transaction was moved from one unknown wallet to another, according to Bitcoin explorer.

Were whales overpaying before?

As mentioned, the transaction had an incredibly small fee, which directly displays Bitcoin’s potential for moving huge amounts of money. The whale did not have to include any bank, financial regulator, government, agency, or any other kind of institution or entity. All they needed was less than half a dollar, and they moved hundreds of millions in BTC.

Of course, a fee this small is unusual even in the crypto world, as other transactions that moved funds of similar size ended up costing a lot more. One such example was seen in July of this year when another Bitcoin whale moved $450 million several times. Each of those transactions had an approximately $400 fee. Another whale moved $1 billion in BTC only a few months ago, in September. That transaction came with a $700-large fee.

Of course, the larger the fee, the shorter the waiting period, and since every user gets to choose the size of the fee themselves, it is likely that the whale in July was in a greater hurry than the one whose transaction was processed yesterday.

Alternatively, it might simply be that the whales have decided that they are overpaying and that a few cents would do just as good as multiple hundreds of dollars.