On April 11, Hong Kong based exchange Bitfinex recorded a transaction of 161,500 Bitcoin for a fee of 0.00010019 BTC or $0.68. The transaction, worth roughly $1.1 billion, is a showcase of the cost-savings potential of the Bitcoin network, which in the last few years has repeatedly executed enormously large transactions for negligible costs in fees.
The source of the transaction was confirmed to be Bitfinex when Bitfinex Chief Technology Officer Paolo Ardoino, responded to Twitter user Krisma, who first brought the transaction to the public’s attention, saying that Bitfinex had refilled their hot wallet with 15,000 Bitcoin, with the rest going back to the original address,
This transaction is only the first of many that has been highlighted to voice the benefits of the Bitcoin blockchain. A transaction involving 94,504 Bitcoin made the headlines in September 2019. At the time worth $1 billion, the Bitfinex transaction now stands as the largest transaction ever made with respect to dollar value.
Remarkably Low Fees
The remarkably low fees associated with blockchain transactions is the one of the primary reasons as to why many of its supporters recommend distributed technology over today’s centralized financial systems. For the same value, a centralized system would charge an exorbitant fee to ensure that the transaction was made.
Indeed, the effectiveness of Bitcoin in this regard has only been getting better. The overpriced figure of $700 fee for the transaction that occurred in September only happened because the user chose high fees at 480 satoshis per byte. At ordinary levels, that transaction could have been executed for $35. The $0.68 fee is an extraordinary multi-fold improvement that has occurred in about 8 months, and Bitcoin transactions continue to impress in being cheaper than any fiat counterpart.