Bitcoin Dust: What It Is and Why You Should Get Rid of It

Imagine having a $100 bill in your pocket. Now, imagine $100 worth of pennies.

Notice the difference?

Bitcoin isn't without its irritating kinks, and tiny bitcoin pieces called "dust" are among the lesser-known. As the analogy above shows, the bitcoin protocol sometimes needs to generate tiny output coins when users send bitcoin back and forth, coins so small in value they require more fees to spend than they're actually worth.

But since blockchain room is limited and small value transactions, say $0.01, still can often take up just as much room as larger transactions, too many of these tinier coin pieces can lead to performance issues in the system as a whole.

In the past, dust wasn't necessarily problem for bitcoin users. The story changed, however, as fees grew higher than ever late last year, making smaller value transactions much more expensive to send. In short, some developers argue the time is ripe to get rid of bitcoin dust now that fees are down again.

Decentralized applications developer Greg Slepak, like many others in the space, is thinking ahead to a time where bitcoin adoption and transaction rates increase - something that might or might not happen.

If that does happen, the argument goes, it's more profitable to move these tiny data pieces while fees are relatively low, especially if a user has collected a lot of them.

Read More = https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-dust-tell-get-rid/