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- Whale Alert on Twitter, three different Bitcoin wallets have transferred 49,992 BTC ($458 million) to another unknown wallet on the Bittrex.
- The most ironically surprising thing about this transaction is the transaction fees which the payer incurred to validate the transaction, a mere 0.0000628 BTC ($0.58).
As initially reported by Whale Alert on Twitter, three different Bitcoin wallets have transferred 49,992 BTC ($458 million) to another unknown wallet on the Bittrex cryptocurrency exchange on February 4 at 10:11 UTC.
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 49,922 #BTC (458,100,287 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 4, 2020
The most ironically surprising thing about this transaction is the transaction fees which the payer incurred to validate the transaction, a mere 0.0000628 BTC ($0.58).
This is not uncommon by cryptocurrency standards, but it once again calls to attention the incredible potential that cryptocurrencies hold in providing financial services like money transfers at such negligibly low costs.
This is also one of the largest reasons why cryptocurrencies remain so popular: the ability to make digital payments at such low transaction fees. Such benefits also provide strong points for crypto advocates on why it will become the money of the future.
This is not highly uncommon for large sums of money to transfer at such extremely cheap rates. There have transactions that account for $1.1 billion that have incurred less than $100 in transaction fees on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Such small transaction fees can never be found in traditional payments systems and would normally take large processing time to validate the transaction by banks.
Instantaneous transfers and negligible transfer fees are parts of what makes cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin such a valuable asset and a challenging alternative to traditional payment systems and banks.
Transaction fees that charged are profits that go to the miner validating the block to be ranked higher for their transaction to included in the current block. The larger the transaction, the more the transaction fee can be paid to the miner so that their transaction gets precedence over others, and the miner recognizes it quicker in the block mined.
The transaction fees go fully to the miner along with the block mining reward forming the incentive for mining. Movements of such amounts normally translate to variations in the Bitcoin market value, and those conducting such transfers are henceforth called “Bitcoin Whales.”
