How do I spend a small amount of bitcoins?

[sgravina]

I have 0.00001 bitcoins in my wallet.  This wallet has 10,000 transactions in it from playing satoshiDice.  (playing has not been good for me, I'm down 30 bitcoins).  I would like to delete the wallet and start with a new one.

When I try to spend the 0.00001 bitcoins the client asks for 0.031 fee, so I can't spend them.  I tried putting 10 bitcoins in the wallet and spending the whole amount but it still asks for the 0.031 fee.  If I subtract 0.031 from the total, spending 9.96901 then the fee reduces to 0.0005 bitcoins and I am left with 0.0305 bitcoins that I still can't spend without a 0.031 fee.  Thus I can't spend all the bitcoins.

0.00001 isn't worth worrying about but it just feels wrong to destroy them.  I'd rather give them to a miner.

Are these bitcoins unspendable?  How do I spend and/or give them away?

Is there a way for me to set the fee larger so that I can spend them.  I'm running the linux 0.6.3 bitcoin-qt client which doesn't have a preferences menu like my Mac client does.

[1713880037]

1713880037

[Littleshop]

I have 0.00001 bitcoins in my wallet.  This wallet has 10,000 transactions in it from playing satoshiDice.  (playing has not been good for me, I'm down 30 bitcoins).  I would like to delete the wallet and start with a new one.

When I try to spend the 0.00001 bitcoins the client asks for 0.031 fee, so I can't spend them.  I tried putting 10 bitcoins in the wallet and spending the whole amount but it still asks for the 0.031 fee.  If I subtract 0.031 from the total, spending 9.96901 then the fee reduces to 0.0005 bitcoins and I am left with 0.0305 bitcoins that I still can't spend without a 0.031 fee.  Thus I can't spend all the bitcoins.

0.00001 isn't worth worrying about but it just feels wrong destroy them.  I'd rather give them to a miner.

Are these bitcoins unspendable?  How do I spend and/or give them away?

Is there a way for me to set the fee larger so that I can spend them.  I'm running the linux 0.6.3 bitcoin-qt client which doesn't have a preferences menu like my Mac client does.

Let it die. You are talking of a very small fraction of a penny.   

[Stephen Gornick]

Are these bitcoins unspendable?  How do I spend and/or give them away?

Receive a larger amount of funds (e.g., 1.0 BTC, then spend that amount + 1.00001 BTC  (or, 0.99951 + 0.00050 fee).  If losing 0.0005 BTC (or whatever fee it computes) in the end as a fee is not worth it to you, then nuke the wallet.

[julz]

So 0.00001 BTC is 1000 satoshis yeah?

Surely they could be combined into a zero-fee transaction a few satoshis at a time(?)
It'd be slow - but presumably a script could be written to do this.

Hardly seems worthwhile for such a small amount - but might be a nice 'maintenance' feature for wallets in future.

[payb.tc]

you could perhaps export the private key which contains the tiny amount.

then after you've created a fresh wallet, import that key into your new wallet.

[sgravina]

This is part of the deflation problem.  If small amounts of bitcoins become unspendable then over time lots of bitcoins will be destroyed.  With US dollars lost pennies are constantly replaced via the bank.  But bitcoin doesn't have a replacement mechanism.  Eventually all the bitcoins will be gone.

[giszmo]

you could perhaps export the private key which contains the tiny amount.

then after you've created a fresh wallet, import that key into your new wallet.

Ahm. 0.031 fee is not "the private key" but very many. Else it would be the standard fee.

[Portnoy]

This is part of the deflation problem.  If small amounts of bitcoins become unspendable then over time lots of bitcoins will be destroyed.  With US dollars lost pennies are constantly replaced via the bank.  But bitcoin doesn't have a replacement mechanism.  Eventually all the bitcoins will be gone.

Deflation is not a problem... 

Deflation and Bitcoin, the last word on this forum

[payb.tc]

you could perhaps export the private key which contains the tiny amount.

then after you've created a fresh wallet, import that key into your new wallet.

Ahm. 0.031 fee is not "the private key" but very many. Else it would be the standard fee.

oh yeeeah, i see that now.

well, my other advice would be to just archive it for the future... no need to spend it, destroy it OR give it away, just rename it 1000_satoshis.dat and back it up in a safe and maybe look at it again in 5 years.

i never actually delete any wallet files.

consequently i've got a whole collection of 'random' wallet files from the past 12 months which most likely have nothing in them, but i figure if the keys have been used at some point a few years from now i'll merge the 10000+ keys in my various old unused wallets and see if there's any dust collected.

[julz]

If small amounts of bitcoins become unspendable then over time lots of bitcoins will be destroyed. 

It's not that small amounts are unspendable - it's surely just that certain amounts are unspendable *when aggregated*.
Satoshi dice manages to send you single satoshis no problem.

Try spending 10 satoshis at once rather than 1000.

I can imagine that there may be certain business models which will rely on collecting very small amounts, so It seems highly likely that there will eventually be some script and/or wallet service which will run as a background task and slowly combine your small-value inputs by broadcasting low or no-fee low-priority transactions.

[dree12]

If small amounts of bitcoins become unspendable then over time lots of bitcoins will be destroyed. 

It's not that small amounts are unspendable - it's surely just that certain amounts are unspendable *when aggregated*.
Satoshi dice manages to send you single satoshis no problem.

Try spending 10 satoshis at once rather than 1000.

I can imagine that there may be certain business models which will rely on collecting very small amounts, so It seems highly likely that there will eventually be some script and/or wallet service which will run as a background task and slowly combine your small-value inputs by broadcasting low or no-fee low-priority transactions.

This will require the minimum tx fee 100 times, or 0.05 BTC!

You could also send 1 satoshi at once: this will be even worse, costing 0.5 BTC!

[bg002h]

You need to wait to spend them until they are worth spending. The transaction fees are in place to discourage what you are trying to do (ie, make a huge transaction with hundreds of inputs) for effectively no Bitcoins. Should your trivial sum be worth spending in the future, the transaction fees will be lower and then it would make sense to spend them. Right now, hold onto your "dust" collection.

Boy wouldn't it stink to have a substantial sum of Bitcoin in a huge number of addresses each containing a Satoshi?

[julz]

If small amounts of bitcoins become unspendable then over time lots of bitcoins will be destroyed.  

It's not that small amounts are unspendable - it's surely just that certain amounts are unspendable *when aggregated*.
Satoshi dice manages to send you single satoshis no problem.

Try spending 10 satoshis at once rather than 1000.

I can imagine that there may be certain business models which will rely on collecting very small amounts, so It seems highly likely that there will eventually be some script and/or wallet service which will run as a background task and slowly combine your small-value inputs by broadcasting low or no-fee low-priority transactions.

This will require the minimum tx fee 100 times, or 0.05 BTC!

You could also send 1 satoshi at once: this will be even worse, costing 0.5 BTC!

What minimum fee?  Turn it off or crank it down... and put in the IP address of a miner known to process zero-fee transactions just to be sure.
That's what I meant by 'low-priority'.
How would satoshidice be sending single satoshis to people if the 'minimum fee' were actually enforced?
(edit: well.. I guess they could be paying it.. I haven't checked)

I'm not completely up to speed with all the issues involved in fees - but I thought it was the size of the transaction in Bytes (due to large number of inputs) which was most likely to leave a feeless transaction in broadcast limbo, but that other feeless or low-fee transactions which are small and simple will generally get picked up by a miner at some point.

[unclemantis]

Find out which private key the amount is assigned to and export it and import the private key into Mt Gox and then send the amount to your new wallet.

PRESTO!

[payb.tc]

Find out which private key the amount is assigned to and export it and import the private key into Mt Gox and then send the amount to your new wallet.

PRESTO!

^^ first read my similar reply above, which was debunked

[dree12]

Find out which private key the amount is assigned to and export it and import the private key into Mt Gox and then send the amount to your new wallet.

PRESTO!

^^ first read my similar reply above, which was debunked

Export ALL the private keys and import them into a new wallet.

[payb.tc]

Find out which private key the amount is assigned to and export it and import the private key into Mt Gox and then send the amount to your new wallet.

PRESTO!

^^ first read my similar reply above, which was debunked

Export ALL the private keys and import them into a new wallet.

wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose of making a 'fresh' wallet?

[drakahn]

you could perhaps export the private key which contains the tiny amount.

then after you've created a fresh wallet, import that key into your new wallet.

Ahm. 0.031 fee is not "the private key" but very many. Else it would be the standard fee.

oh yeeeah, i see that now.

well, my other advice would be to just archive it for the future... no need to spend it, destroy it OR give it away, just rename it 1000_satoshis.dat and back it up in a safe and maybe look at it again in 5 years.

i never actually delete any wallet files.

consequently i've got a whole collection of 'random' wallet files from the past 12 months which most likely have nothing in them, but i figure if the keys have been used at some point a few years from now i'll merge the 10000+ keys in my various old unused wallets and see if there's any dust collected.

This is what i am doing, i have a few dozen wallets with a few thousand single satoshi inputs each, i am just keeping them for a later time when a satoshi is worth more and the/a client handles them better

[dooglus]

0.00001 isn't worth worrying about but it just feels wrong to destroy them.  I'd rather give them to a miner.

Are these bitcoins unspendable?  How do I spend and/or give them away?

You can send a transaction without fees so long as:

* all the outputs (including change, if any) are 0.01 BTC or more
* the transaction is 10,000 bytes or smaller
* the priority is high enough

I'll address the 3 points in order:

* The first thing you're going to need to do is to get some more coins in your wallet, or you'll not be able to afford the fees (free to those that can afford it, very expensive to those that can't).  Let's suppose you add 11 bitcoins.

* To keep the transaction size down, we'll send to a single output to ourselves.  That leaves you room for 55 inputs.  One of the inputs is going to have to be the 11 bitcoins, leaving room for 54 satoshis of dust.

* Priority is determined by multiplying the age of each input by its size and summing the results then dividing by the transaction size in bytes.  In order for the transaction to be free, the average age * size needs to be around 1 BTC day.  Since the dust is never going to be old enough to contribute significantly to the priority, the 11 bitcoins is going to have to contribute enough to bring the average up.  In order to spend 11 bitcoins on their own without a fee, the 11 bitcoins should be around 1/11 of a day old.  We need them to be 55 times older than that to be spendable without a fee - so 55/11 = 5 days old.

So in summary, you can spend 54 satoshis at a time so long as you combine them with a 11 BTC coin that hasn't moved for at least 5 days.

You can then repeat the process every 5 days, adding about 54 satoshis of dust to the amount you transfer to yourself.  Since you have 1000 satoshis to transfer, this is going to take quite a long time.  Like 19 sets of 5 days, or 95 days.  You could speed the process up if you can put more than 11 BTC into the wallet.  The more value you can spend each time, the faster the priority goes up, and the less time you have to wait between transactions.  If you can add 110 BTC instead of 11 BTC then the wait time goes down from 5 days to 0.5 days between transactions.

Note: I've not tried this to see if it really works, but what I've written is pretty close to how the satoshi client works in terms of deciding which transations need a fee.

Or you could just forget about it. 

[deepceleron]

You can attempt to send them to a new address with no fee, using details here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Free_transaction_relay_policy (it appears that Eligius has finally added some sanity to it's inclusion of free transactions, so they may still never be included in a block). If you sent them to an address with an existing balance (like the bitcoin faucet donation address) they would become a spendable part of that address's balance.