How can I get rid of dust in my wallet?

[Kakmakr]

I posted this on another thread, but I do not understand how this is done?

Can I use a mixer to get rid of "dust"? I think someone says a lot of small transactions in a wallet create dust.
If I put it through a mixer, will it put all the small coins together, to get rid of the dust?

Or what do I do to get rid of the dust?

You can create a transaction to another address in your wallet, to group your outputs.
But if you have many of those 1 satoshi dusts, it is better to not touch them so to save transaction fee.

I use a lot of faucets and accumulate a lot of dust. This supposedly increase my transaction fees. Can someone explain in detail, how I can get rid of all this, with the least amount of increased transaction fees?

I use blockchain for the faucet stuff.

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[RonPaulBTC]

I don't get it. What is "dust"? You'll have a sum of a lot of small transactions in your wallet. Tons of dust = nice block of sand, so why you wanna get rid of it.
Anyway, couldn't you just send it to an address that doesnt exist?

[DannyHamilton]

I use a lot of faucets

That's a very bad idea.

and accumulate a lot of dust.

Correct.

This supposedly increase my transaction fees.

Which is why I said it was a very bad idea.  Depending on the "faucets" you are using, it's quite likely that it will cost you more than you receive to use any of it.  In other words, a complete waste of time.

Can someone explain in detail, how I can get rid of all this, with the least amount of increased transaction fees?

Load the private keys into a wallet that allows you coin control, and create transactions that bind a single large output with a few small outputs.  Wait of the transaction to receive enough confirmations. Repeat.

How quickly you can repeat the process will depend on the size of your large output.  Assuming that you have a single 1 BTC output, you might be able to repeat the process ever 12 hours or so if you are lucky.  Each transaction can combine about 5 outputs together without a fee.

I use blockchain for the faucet stuff.

You'll need to export the wallet from blockchain and import it into something that gives you better coin control.

I don't get it. What is "dust"?

Extremely small value outputs that use up space in your transactions causing your transaction size (in terms of bytes) to increase and therefore your customary transaction fee to increase.

You'll have a sum of a lot of small transactions in your wallet. Tons of dust = nice block of sand

Incorrect.  Distinct outputs are not stored as a single block. They are stored (and spent) as individual outputs.  It's a bit like if you open up the physical wallet in your back pocket and pour 10,000 pennies into it.  Sure, you have $100 in the wallet, but when you go to spend it you still have to count out all those pennies. They don't just magically melt together and transform into a $100 bill.

so why you wanna get rid of it.

Because adding five separate 10 µBTC outputs to a transaction adds 50 µBTC in total value to the transaction, but requires the transaction to spend an extra 100 µBTC in fees.  Therefore, your transaction costs you an extra 50 µBTC more than it would have if you didn't have the dust included in the transaction.

Anyway, couldn't you just send it to an address that doesnt exist?

Sure, but it would cost you money to do so.

Lets say that you have 500 "dust" outputs all valued at about 1 µBTC each.  If you try to send them all to 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE you'd have to pay a transaction fee of nearly 10,000 µBTC (0.01 BTC) just to get rid of the 500 µBTC (0.0005 BTC).

[steven.G999]

all transactions that nothing can be cleaned and it will become evident when something happens one day later

[Soappa]

all transactions that nothing can be cleaned and it will become evident when something happens one day later

Huh? I have absolutely no idea what you want to say here.

[Lorenzo]

I used to use a lot of faucets too but stopped once I realized how much more I could get just by buying with fiat instead. I still visit them occasionally though.

Anyway, as I remember it, I always put in the lowest possible fee using Electrum (10,000 satoshis) and transactions would always go through and be included in the next block. This was despite the address having received multiple ~5,000-10,000 satoshi transactions.

[botany]

Can someone explain in detail, how I can get rid of all this, with the least amount of increased transaction fees?

Load the private keys into a wallet that allows you coin control, and create transactions that bind a single large output with a few small outputs.  Wait of the transaction to receive enough confirmations. Repeat.

How quickly you can repeat the process will depend on the size of your large output.  Assuming that you have a single 1 BTC output, you might be able to repeat the process ever 12 hours or so if you are lucky.  Each transaction can combine about 5 outputs together without a fee.

Alternatively, if you don't have a sufficient amount of dust, just leave it as it is.
Come back and view it maybe in a few years from now.
Transaction fees decrease as bitcoin price increases. Plus your dust will have increased priority
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-transaction-fees-slashed-tenfold/

[Jamie_Boulder]

If your fees went up then just go create a new wallet? if they dropped and went up explain how you decreased the fees because idk lol

[Wusolini]

I posted this on another thread, but I do not understand how this is done?

Can I use a mixer to get rid of "dust"? I think someone says a lot of small transactions in a wallet create dust.
If I put it through a mixer, will it put all the small coins together, to get rid of the dust?

Or what do I do to get rid of the dust?

You can create a transaction to another address in your wallet, to group your outputs.
But if you have many of those 1 satoshi dusts, it is better to not touch them so to save transaction fee.

I use a lot of faucets and accumulate a lot of dust. This supposedly increase my transaction fees. Can someone explain in detail, how I can get rid of all this, with the least amount of increased transaction fees?

I use blockchain for the faucet stuff.

How many transactions do you have?
Try import (sweep) private key to another blockchain wallet.
This worked for my 0.012 BTC with 80 input transactions. Armory wallet required almost half as fee (sweep took whole day to confirm but cost me only 0.0001 BTC)

[chanz]

Just sweep the all wallets priv keys to a blockchain wallet and try sending the whole sum to other address.

[Borisz]

This "dust" is a major issue I see with Bitcoin. I have 1000$ in 1$ bills, but I can't take them out of my wallet.

I generally try to send it - as much as I can- to e.g. an exchange and do some magic there. if I remember correctly, after some core changes I could send some coins even though I couldn't do it before. Not sure exactly why, but it was a positive thing.

[Tammy Chan]

This "dust" is a major issue I see with Bitcoin. I have 1000$ in 1$ bills, but I can't take them out of my wallet.

I generally try to send it - as much as I can- to e.g. an exchange and do some magic there. if I remember correctly, after some core changes I could send some coins even though I couldn't do it before. Not sure exactly why, but it was a positive thing.

You can't take them out, but you can choose to not spend those dusts by enabling the coin control features in bitcoin core.

Also, it seems the dust spamming has stopped as I haven't received any more dusts for 3 days now.

[Unbelive]

Some say that old coins dont have transaction fees. so maybe just let that dust lay there for a year or so. And you might be surprised of its worth then.

[Tammy Chan]

Some say that old coins dont have transaction fees. so maybe just let that dust lay there for a year or so. And you might be surprised of its worth then.

Somewhat true, but not entirely.
The current set up is that you could expect your free transaction to be included in a block without problem if it has a priority of 57,600,000
(https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees#Technical_info). So roughly speaking, if you have a 10 bitcoin output, you can send it without fee when it has 15 confirmations; but if you have a 0.0001 output, you can send it when it has 1500000 confirmations.

[shanem]

Don't worry about dust. If you want to get rid of dust, just create a new wallet and your worries will be gone.

[pooya87]

Load the private keys into a wallet that allows you coin control, and create transactions that bind a single large output with a few small outputs.  Wait of the transaction to receive enough confirmations. Repeat.

How quickly you can repeat the process will depend on the size of your large output.  Assuming that you have a single 1 BTC output, you might be able to repeat the process ever 12 hours or so if you are lucky.  Each transaction can combine about 5 outputs together without a fee.

can you give an example of such wallet
and
do you mean to send the small amounts(dust) to a new address that you create (in that new wallet) or does it bind inside the same address (the primary address that had dust in)
and one last thing
what amount of bitcoin is considered DUST

[Borisz]

Some say that old coins dont have transaction fees. so maybe just let that dust lay there for a year or so. And you might be surprised of its worth then.

I was suspecting/heard this as well somewhere. I think this was the reason I could spend some of my "old" coins.

[alistar]

I dont think you want what I got.. I got like 0.00000001 sent to me.

[DannyHamilton]

- snip -
a wallet that allows you coin control
- snip -

can you give an example of such wallet

The most recent versions of Bitcoin Core offer Coin Control as an advanced feature that can be turned on in the settings.

and
do you mean to send the small amounts(dust) to a new address that you create (in that new wallet) or does it bind inside the same address (the primary address that had dust in)

I personally recommend ALWAYS using a new address for EVERY transaction you ever receive.  This is how bitcoin was intended to be used, and what Satoshi stated in the original bitcoin whitepaper.  It improves security and privacy, and it helps maintain the fungible nature of bitcoin.  However, if for some reason you prefer to re-use addresses, it will work that way too.

and one last thing
what amount of bitcoin is considered DUST

I personally consider anything less than $0.01 worth of bitcoin to be "dust".  I think the rules on transaction relay and transaction fees aren't quite so strict.

[BeginToMine]

You can not get rid of it.