A user claims to have fallen victim to a cyberattack, resulting in a fee of 83.65 BTC for the transfer of 55.77 BTC.
An unexplained fee in a Bitcoin transaction has recently resulted in the loss of approximately $3.1 million.
On X, a user with the handle “@83_5BTC” has claimed that his funds were used without their consent, revealing that immediately after transferring 139 bitcoin to a new cold wallet, a new transaction was initiated to another address with a fee of 83.65 BTC.
Some users suggest that the cause of the loss is linked to the low–entropy of the newly created cold wallet.
Fee record surpassed
This episode has set a new record, surpassing the previous highest transaction fee ever recorded, which was $500,000 in September 2023.
The anonymous user sought to confirm the legitimacy of their claim by signing a message containing their Bitcoin address, confirming ownership of the lost funds. Some notable figures in the industry, including Jameson Lopp, co-founder and CTO of Casa, and Mononaut, a Bitcoin developer, verified the signature. However, Mononaut raised doubts about the security of this verification, suggesting that if the wallet had been compromised, the signature could have been purposely made by a malicious actor.
Mononaut suggested that the speed of the transaction and the high fee indicate an automated script designed to pay a high fee to outpace competitors in stealing funds from such vulnerable addresses.
Situation unfolding
The identity of the alleged victim is still to be verified, and it remains to be seen whether AntPool, the pool that confirmed the block containing the transaction, will decide to refund the fee, as has happened in previous incidents.
