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

Bitcoin isn't without its irritating kinks, and tiny bitcoin pieces called "Dust" are among the lesser-known.

In the past, dust wasn't necessarily problem for bitcoin users.

In short, some developers argue the time is ripe to get rid of bitcoin dust now that fees are down again.

To get rid of this "Dust," users need to "Consolidate" their all their dust "Transaction outputs" into one.

How users can identify and get rid of dust, depends on their wallet, however.

A user can select a number of "Change addresses" holding dust, then select the "Send from" button to create one transaction consolidating all these little dust particles into a single transaction output.

Some wallets might not offer this granular level of control, especially if they're custodial wallets like Coinbase, which essentially manage these sort of details themselves behind the scenes - choosing whether to keep or get rid of dust.

If a user's dust is already all tied to the same account, then the dust is already linked together anyway.

Because of the high fees earlier this year, larger bitcoin companies were driven to adopt more efficient transaction technologies - including getting rid of dust - to reduce fees.

Bitcoin companies might have a larger-scale impact on overall dust levels - as they already have.