A user of Bitcoin (BTC) accidentally paid transaction fees of $ 70,000 for a single transaction. He used “Replace by Fee” (Rbf), a method with which transactions can be accelerated by offering higher fees.
What did the BTC transaction look like?
On April 8, 2025 tried The user for the second time to get an RBF transaction after the first transaction had got stuck due to a lack of confirmations. While the first transaction proposed a conservative, significantly lower fee, the user increased the fee using the RBF function.
Signs of panic
The original transaction was followed by another in which the user not only stated a very high fee per Satoshi, but also 74,818.116 Satoshis as entire transaction costs. For comparison: 100 million Satoshis correspond to an entire Bitcoin. The user was therefore “ready” to pay 0.74 BTC for a single transaction.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that this is a typing error that was created out of panic. The user wanted to replace his original transaction with a version with higher fees so that it would be processed faster. This incident shows that you should never act under time pressure and know exactly what you do – especially if you enter the amounts manually at RBF and do not automatically calculate.
Dangers of such Bitcoin transactions
Transactions that have not yet been confirmed end up in the so-called Mempool of the Bitcoin network. Miners prefer to select the transactions with the highest fees to include them in the next block of the blockchain. By introducing RBF, users can determine which fees they are willing to pay to be treated preferably.
If users enter the fees manually, you can theoretically determine any amount – as long as there are enough Bitcoin in your wallet. There is a considerable risk of typing errors as well as for hasty or uncontrolled filling out of the RBF data. In addition, many users may not fully understand the principle of RBF.
It is therefore advisable to find out more about the functioning of the Bitcoin blockchain before setting such parameters by hand. In the world of the Cryptocurrencies a small mistake can quickly have big financial consequences.