Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex has paid $23.7 million in fees for a $100,000 transaction via blockchain technology in what appears to be an unusual transaction that will go down in the history books.
Bitfinex was transferring that amount, in Tether, to the decentralized exchange DeversiFi on Monday, according to records from blockchain tracker Etherscan.
Anyone transacting with the Ethereum blockchain pays miners what is known as a gas fee for integrating their trades into the digital ledger – an amount that can vary depending on supply, demand and computing power at any given time. While erratic and exorbitant fees have been a common annoyance in this world amid this year’s decentralized finance boom, the $24 million appears to have been a mistake, with DeversiFi calling it “falsely high” in a tweet.
While common mistakes in the world of traditional trading can be corrected, it is a unique problem in the crypto world because blockchain transactions are irreversible.
“In such transactions, errors are corrected via a third party,” a Bitfinex spokesperson said in an email. This was also confirmed by DeversiFi in their latest statement. “We look forward to DeversiFi’s investigation and resolution of this matter on their part,” he wrote.
What saves the situation, is the intertwined relationship between Tether and Bitfinex, as the two companies share some owners and CEOs of the two companies, and DeversiFi and Bitfinex are also closely related. The three founders of DeversiFi worked at Bitfinex.
“No customer funds on DeversiFi are at risk and this is an internal issue that the platform has to solve,” DeversiFi said in a tweet.
The two companies came under a New York attorney general investigation earlier this year, with Tether executives facing a criminal investigation.
