Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool has returned 19.8 bitcoin (BTC) to Paxos after the crypto services firm paid a $520,000 fee on a transaction worth just $2,000 earlier this week.

Paxos said the overpayment was due to a "bug" in the corporate operations side of business. Bitcoin fees are typically no more than $20 per transaction. Blockchain data shows the funds were returned to Paxos on Friday.

A bitcoin fee is what miners receive after a transaction is confirmed on the Bitcoin blockchain. Fees can be adjusted by the user to give certain transactions priority over others.

"After conducting identity verification, we have confirmed the ownership of these BTC, and fully refunded the fee to the sender," F2Pool wrote on X.

The refund comes after intense discussion amongst the bitcoin community, with the likes of Stake.fish founder Chun Wang saying that he "regretted" agreeing to a refund with Paxos.

Casa Hodl co-founder and early bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp praised Bitcoin as being a "cooperative network" after the fee was returned.

"Bitcoin is an adversarial network, but on the flip side it's also a cooperative network," Lopp wrote on X. "Miners are humans too, and they realize that people make mistakes. While retaining egregious transaction fees makes for a nice short-term profit, returning those funds is the humane decision."

Mining Bitcoin F2Pool On-chain Data Paxos

Oliver Knight

Oliver Knight joined CoinDesk as a news reporter in April 2022. Before joining CoinDesk, Knight was the Chief Reporter at Coin Rivet for three years. Having graduated with a journalism degree from Birmingham City University, Knight went on to work at various sports publications before diving into the world of Bitcoin in 2014. He does not have any crypto holdings.