<p>They are <em>economically unspendable</em>. If you only had the described 1-sat UTXOs, you would be unable to build a transaction that meets the minimum feerate.</p>
<p>Each UTXO requires some blockspace to be spent. If this blockspace costs more in fees at a given feerate than the UTXO is worth, an input spending the UTXO negatively contributes to the fees of a transaction—the input cannot carry its own weight, other inputs would need to add more fees to cover the deficit. I describe such UTXOs as having a <em>negative effective value (at the given feerate)</em>.</p>
<p>As in your example, a UTXO might have a negative effective value even at the minimum feerate. I call such UTXOs <em>economically unspendable</em>. They can be spent, though only if the user deliberately pays extra for removing them from the UTXO set.</p>
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<p><sup>Note that the above terms differ from <em><a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/41082/5406">dust</a></em>: the dust limit refers to the fixed amount of fees an input and output of a specific output type would cost at the discard feerate (3 ṩ/vB). The limit that makes an output <em>economically unspendable</em> is based on the cost of the input at the minimum feerate, and having a <em>negative effective value</em> is a property depending on the context of a given feerate.</sup></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-14T12:21:19.497Z
2024-03-14T18:16:35.007Z
2024-03-14T18:16:35.007Z
Murch
<p>In terms of UTXO management, I have the following extreme example to illustrate my question. Let's say I have 1 BTC with 100 million UTXOs of 1 sat each (or even 10 million UTXOs with 10 sats each). My question is - is the entire 1 BTC balance unspendable in a higher fee environment OR is it spendable and I will just pay a high fee?</p>

<transaction-fees><terminology><utxo-management>
Is it even possible to spend a stash of 1-sat UTXOs?
Leo
# Is it even possible to spend a stash of 1-sat UTXOs?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-03-14)

In terms of UTXO management, I have the following extreme example to illustrate my question. Let's say I have 1 BTC with 100 million UTXOs of 1 sat each (or even 10 million UTXOs with 10 sats each). My question is - is the entire 1 BTC balance unspendable in a higher fee environment OR is it spendable and I will just pay a high fee?

**Tags:** transaction-fees, terminology, utxo-management


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2024-03-14. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

They are *economically unspendable*. If you only had the described 1-sat UTXOs, you would be unable to build a transaction that meets the minimum feerate.

Each UTXO requires some blockspace to be spent. If this blockspace costs more in fees at a given feerate than the UTXO is worth, an input spending the UTXO negatively contributes to the fees of a transaction—the input cannot carry its own weight, other inputs would need to add more fees to cover the deficit. I describe such UTXOs as having a *negative effective value (at the given feerate)*.

As in your example, a UTXO might have a negative effective value even at the minimum feerate. I call such UTXOs *economically unspendable*. They can be spent, though only if the user deliberately pays extra for removing them from the UTXO set.

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Note that the above terms differ from *[dust](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/41082/5406)*: the dust limit refers to the fixed amount of fees an input and output of a specific output type would cost at the discard feerate (3 ṩ/vB). The limit that makes an output *economically unspendable* is based on the cost of the input at the minimum feerate, and having a *negative effective value* is a property depending on the context of a given feerate.


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