Using Electrum

[JohnJ2019]

Hello My Name is John J
I am new to using bitcoin
How do I send a transaction without having issues with Dust?
I tried to send a transaction for like 12 dollars in Bitcoin on Electrum's platform but it would not confirm due to having dust.
I have more than enough money in the account but electrum keeps saying that I have "Dust" and will not confirm/go through.
Please advise?

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[LoyceV]

Considering the current high fees, it won't be possible to send "dust", it's simply not worth the fee needed to send it.
Do you mind sharing your Bitcoin address (addresses start with 1, 3 or bc1q), so I can have a look at your small inputs?

I suggest to read this: Fees are low, use this opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs!

[o_e_l_e_o]

Every time you receive a bitcoin payment, even if to the same address, the coins remain separate. An analogy would be like fifty people all giving you a 10 cent coin each. Although you might have 5 dollars in total, that 5 dollars is still made up of multiple individual coins.

This is what "dust" is - many small denominations of bitcoin. Although your total bitcoin might be much higher (12 dollars in your case), if that total is made up of multiple small inputs (such as lots of 10 cent coins in my analogy), then that is termed "dust". The problem with dust is that each individual input requires data to transact - use lots of them together, and you need a lot of data, which equates to a lot of fees when the network is congested (as it is now).

Much like if you were to give your fifty 10 cent coins to someone and they were to hand you back a 5 dollar note, when you spend all this dust together it will be combined in to one input. The best thing to do is to wait until the network is much less congested and fees are much lower to combined all this dust in to one, so you can spend it easily and cheaply in the future when required. See the link LoyceV provided on how to do that.

[JohnJ2019]

Is sharing my Bitcoin address safe on this Forum ?
How do you know when the fees are cheaper and when there is not so much congestion?
Also does Electrum allow one to consolidate all their inputs?

[mindrust]

Is sharing my Bitcoin address safe on this Forum ?

Depends on your situation, rather than the forum itself. As long as you don't share your private keys, sharing your public bitcoin address here on this forum isn't different than doing it on twitter or some other social media.

If you don't want any publicity, don't share your address.

Also how do you know when the fees are cheaper and when there is not so much congestion?

You can check the fees here:

https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

This website shows how much you need to pay whether you want to make a fast&expensive or slow&cheap transaction.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Is sharing my Bitcoin address safe on this Forum ?

Sharing your public address will allow other users to see how many coins are in that address, and follow those coins backwards to the addresses they came from or forwards to the addresses you send them to. It's up to you whether you think this is a risk to yourself or not. Sharing your public address only does not allow anyone else to spend or transfer your coins.

How do you know when the fees are cheaper and when there is not so much congestion?

I generally use this site to get a visual representation of how full the mempool currently is: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,2d. You would want to wait until it is down in the blue area near the bottom. However, you don't have to be watching it 24/7 waiting for the right time - you can send a transaction with low fees at any time, and it will be processed automatically as and when the mempool clears out.

Also does Electrum allow one to consolidate all their inputs?

Yes. You would simply need to send all the coins in your wallet to another empty address in your own wallet.

[JohnJ2019]

Thanks
My address is as follows:
14CW9jvxwm7SQr4C1gyu3kweUotEzR4VKU
I think this is right.
Does the wallet have to be with another Bitcoin platform or can I still use the same one (Electrum)?

[LoyceV]

My address is as follows:

This address received 1 input worth over $100. Dust shouldn't be your problem. Is it possible you tried to send a very small amount when you wanted to send 12 dollars (say 0.0015 Bitcoin)?

Warning: don't trust anyone who sends you a PM to enter something in Electrum. People have been scammed that way.

[JohnJ2019]

Thanks for the heads up
Yes that is about right.
So the problem is that I tried to send too little?
So not sending a good portion of Bitcoin can cause dust issues?
Do I still need to consolidate my Bitcoin since I have 1 input over 100$?

[LoyceV]

So the problem is that I tried to send too little?

I'm not sure.

So not sending a good portion of Bitcoin can cause dust issues?

If you're sending like 0.00000012 Bitcoin by accident, that may cause the problem.

Do I still need to consolidate my Bitcoin since I have 1 input over 100$?

No.
I suggest to forget about dollars for a moment: how much Bitcoin were you trying to send?

[JohnJ2019]

I tried to send 12 dollars worth of bitcoin (0.00154000 BT) plus the fees.
It kept on saying that I had dust and couldn't broadcast the transaction.

[TryNinja]

I tried to send 12 dollars worth of bitcoin (0.00154000 BT) plus the fees.
It kept on saying that I had dust and couldn't broadcast the transaction.

Make your transaction and click "Preview" instead of "Send", then "Copy" and paste it here so we can see how your transaction looks like. (If you don't mind)

[JohnJ2019]

Does this look correct?
I hope this does not have any damning info lol?

45505446ff00020000000133b349c553970754e741c6322d583c669a74ae135cad48efc621fb061 fcb1fd9000000005701ff4c53ff0488b21e0000000000000000009bb567be7abc4b1b32e54da814 d1ccbc65a608a1d8dcb3e0c9dba2d3cca4f4d8039692b2ec9a79addf522e9d19ee39e1de2bf9050 19b67905ec4804aa2e1a8fcb700000000fdffffff02950000000000000017a9149af7b1d8dcab40 795303c2347e0c83cf5feec1cb8726d01400000000001976a914bdc272dfb0a51ea46bf7438427e 16dc6cacb56a488acdecd0800

[khaled0111]

Obviously you don't have a dust problem as LoyceV explained (0.0015 btc ~12$ is not considered as dust).
Are you sure you are using BTC as the "base unit for bitcoin amounts"?

In your electrum wallet, under settings, click denomination and make sure it says BTC and not something else like mBTC or bits. If not, change it to BTC and retry sending. <= Android version.

[JohnJ2019]

Thanks.
I hope that solves the problem

[Thirdspace]

I tried to send 12 dollars worth of bitcoin (0.00154000 BT) plus the fees.
It kept on saying that I had dust and couldn't broadcast the transaction.

the only possible reason is that you are not using the correct denomination like khaled0111 said
instead of sending 0.00154 BTC, you are actually sending 0.00154 mBTC (154 satoshi) which is considered as dust
btw, for some reason I can't decode your posted rawtx can you recheck and repost it?

[HCP]

It is definitely a "unit" issue... the above transaction decodes in Electrum as:



You can see the 0.00000149 BTC output! Another "victim" of Electrum defaulting to units of mBTC

JohnJ2019, you need to use the menu: Tools -> Preferences -> General

Make sure "base unit" is set to BTC:



I'd also recommend setting the "zeros after decimal point" to 8, but that's just my personal preference to keep things consistent.

[TryNinja]

Obviously you don't have a dust problem as LoyceV explained (0.0015 btc ~12$ is not considered as dust).

Never assume this.

He could have 100 outputs of 0.000015 BTC which makes a total of 0.0015 BTC, not necessarily 1 input of 0.0015 BTC. We don't know unless he explicit his outputs or paste his raw tx as he did above.

[Thirdspace]

He could have 100 inputs of 0.000015 BTC which makes a total of 0.0015 BTC, not necessarily 1 input of 0.0015 BTC. We don't know unless he explicit his inputs or paste his raw tx as he did above.

afaik dust problem warning only appears when you have at least one output less than dust amount
having dust inputs won't trigger the error rejection, but they might cost more than their amounts to send

@HCP why can't I decode his rawtx on other decoders? is it because it's (non-standard?) unsigned rawtx created by electrum?

[HCP]

@HCP why can't I decode his rawtx on other decoders? is it because it's (non-standard?) unsigned rawtx created by electrum?

Honestly I'm not 100% sure... I can only guess that given all other "decoders" (including Bitcoin Core) report it as invalid, that Electrum is doing something non-standard when serialising an unsigned transaction using the "export"/"copy" funtionality... most likely to facilitate MultiSig or offline signing.

I would guess it's added info regarding the "inputs" being used so that (offline or CoSigner) Electrum knows which private keys it needs to sign with.