In the article is the example of paying somebody 0.15 of a bitcoin with the inpu... | Hacker News

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fernly on Dec 7, 2013 | parent | context | favorite | on: How the Bitcoin protocol actually works

In the article is the example of paying somebody 0.15 of a bitcoin with the input of 0.20 and two outputs, 0.15 to the payee and 0.05 back to oneself. I am picturing having my wallet cluttered with lots of such little fractional bits, the "change" from transactions. How to tidy up? But maybe the answer is, next time I want to pay somebody 0.10 I just give them two my 0.05 "nickel" pieces... Well, I said it was a dumb question...

diminoten on Dec 7, 2013 [–]

If you want to, you could create a transaction that lets you spend all of those "loose change" transactions into a bigger transaction.

You have to do this for assurance contracts [0], for example, where the transaction cannot have any change (a transaction back to yourself).

[0] - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_3:_Assurance_co...

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