According to CryptoPotato, an unknown Bitcoin user paid a significantly high transaction fee of 4 BTC ($172,000) on Tuesday, which was over 133% the size of the transaction itself. The transaction sent 2.9 BTC to the intended recipient, and according to mempool.space, the user overpaid by a factor of 29,992x. The user paid 1,800,890 satoshis per vByte (sat/vB), while the standard transaction for that block only paid around 60 sat/vB.
Tomer Strolight, editor-in-chief for Swan Bitcoin, commented on the transaction, advising users to consolidate Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) instead of turning one into a fee. UTXOs are individual BTC transfers within a user's Bitcoin wallet, and consolidating them can help avoid higher transaction fees. On-chain data suggests that the high-paying user was attempting to consolidate their UTXOs to avoid this issue.
Although Bitcoin transactions and fees are technically irreversible, overpaid transfers have often been returned by the miners who receive them. In September, Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool returned funds to Paxos after they accidentally paid $500,000 for a Bitcoin transaction. Similarly, mining pool giant Antpool reimbursed an anonymous user's record-breaking $3.1 million fee to miners.