When dust costs more than it is worth
How to recognise UTXOs that are uneconomical to spend at current fee rates before you open a consolidation window.
A cold wallet that has collected years of small receives can hide coins that cost more to move than they contribute. During an audit we sort outputs into size bands and compare the smallest band against a conservative fee estimate for a typical consolidation input.
If several outputs sit below that threshold, the honest advice is often to wait — or to consolidate only when fees are unusually low and you already need to touch the wallet for another reason. Sweeping dust in a busy mempool simply burns value for the sake of tidiness.
When you do act, group dust with medium change fragments so the new coin has enough mass to remain useful. Leaving one larger untouched UTXO for a known payment is often wiser than folding everything into a single output in one sitting.