A Bitcoin whale has reportedly transferred nearly $1 billion worth of Bitcoin to a Bitstamp account while paying less than $1 in fees. Revealing details from the transaction, a Bitcoin block bot revealed that the 101,857 BTC transaction, which is currently $925 billion according to today’s market price, only attracted $0.48 in fee charge.
This whale movement happens to have been an inside transaction made by Bitstamp itself, as the co-founder disclosed that the wallet address associated with the transaction is one of its cold wallets.
The transaction includes hundreds of other whale price movements on the Bitcoin network which has attracted a cost-efficient fee charge. This is particularly beneficial for whales, who have been spotted over the past three months to have carried out some of the largest Bitcoin transactions on the market. Â
Two weeks ago, a $2.24 billion whale movement was spotted by another crypto tracking tool. The transaction was made in Bitcoin and sent separately to different wallets. According to data from the tracking tool, the transfer which was made between multiple wallets was carried out seven times at a cost of $0.93 per transfer, with the total fee coming down to just $6.51, all under one hour.
In contrast, traditional banks are known to warrant higher fee charges, which are estimated to go as high as 1% of the amount being transacted. Via PayPal, the former whale transaction of nearly $1 billion would have cost around $27 million according to the Fee Calculator website. This goes to show that Bitcoin’s efficiency in terms of speed and affordability, to a great measure, is substantially unmatched.
Although Bitcoin’s transaction system has evolved over time to become more affordable and efficient, the recent drop in fees have contributed to keeping transaction costs as minimal as possible.
Data from BitInfoCharts, a cryptocurrency analytics website shows that Bitcoin fees have dropped below $1. This price drop is said to have not been spotted on the network since April, just before the Bitcoin halving that occurred in May, just a month after.
Ethereum fee charges on the other hand have reportedly surpassed Bitcoin’s. The uptick is usually a result of network congestion, which then causes delays on the network as transactions take longer time to process, thereby requiring users to pay a higher amount for transaction prioritization.
As the number of unprocessed transactions on the Ethereum network continued to increase, on the 11th of June, fee charges surged above $4 for a short period of time and then fell back to $0.40. Meanwhile, as the second phase of Ethereum (Ethereum 2.0) develops into fruition, the team at Ethereum promises scalability, which means that exorbitant fee charges are bound to become a thing of the past.
