I agree. I don't believe that smaller utxos will be generally easier to spend.
I do think it makes sense to spend (significantly?) more in fees than the face value of a nominally dust utxo in order to consolidate it if points 1-3 of the original post are true.
This is important because if you think bitcoin's value in terms of fiat will be an order of magnitude higher at some future point, it is economically rational to spend in fees much more than the current fiat value of the utxo in order to merge it with a larger utxo.
27 sats \ 3 replies \ @Murch 13 Apr
Why would it ever make sense to spend more in fees than the current fiat value!?
You're essentially saying that paying a miner out of band will be cheaper than paying them in band. That doesn't make sense to me.
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Because I'm not paying in btc.
Now, the obvious problem here is that I could just buy btc at market rates, instead of trying to "redeem" my dust this way.
It only makes sense when a person can not buy btc at market rates.
But there might be use cases here: bitcoin atms charge significantly higher than market rates. As do some sellers on bisq.
Maybe there is a world where people interested in buying non kyc bitcoin pay out of band fees to miners to redeem other people's dust outputs.
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27 sats \ 1 reply \ @Murch 13 Apr
Okay sure, if you cannot buy coins at market rate, you can pay a premium to consolidate small value UTXOs.
I guess your point wasn't clear to me from the OP.
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Yes, I need to add this as a point 4 to my original post. Something like:
  1. If you cannot buy btc at market rates, or if you don't want to buy it from other sellers available to you.
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