This was just a misunderstanding, the $81 fee would have been for consolidating the hundreds of individual transactions making up that $1.3M.
You can transfer bitcoin for less than a dollar. The fees have nothing to do with the amount of money you are spending, but rather with the complexity of your specific transaction.
After being explained what his (complicated, aimed at power users) wallet software is doing, this was the reaction of the person holding the money:
>Thanks, this makes me think of Bitcoin as being more useful as a payment tool again.
Turns out it’s really not that bad if you look beyond the headlines. There have been days when the fees were crazy, but that’s far from being the norm.
