Monday, December 25, 2017

The frozen money of cryptocoin dust

I have taken profits on my ethereum from back in August and went one level deeper, a dream within a dream. Coinbase is considered the "safe" exchange in the US. They have state of the art security (nothing is guaranteed), cold storage, and clean interface. They only offer trades in 4 cryptocoins, so if you want to get in on what are termed "altcoins", or alternative crypto projects, you have to find another exchange.

A little research led me to Binance. After creating an account, I found the ETH address of the online wallet there and was able to do a direct transfer of ETH from my coinbase wallet. The ETH network was a little clogged and my first direct transfer through the blockchain took 3 hours. During that time, my money was in limbo, it didn't exist in either place. Since then, transfers have only taken a couple of minutes. That's a pretty big time gap. With a wallet full of ETH, I was able to do quick and low cost cryptocurrency swaps on binance. I got in and out of a few coins reaping small profits and eventually some small losses, too.

What I didn't expect was for fractions of crypto to be left behind when I sold it. Most of the currencies and tokens use ledgers that go to 6 digits, ten millionths of a unit. For example, in one of my wallets, I sold as much as I could to convert back to ETH and ended up with 0.00670500 ICX. Most blockchains require a transaction fee so I didn't have enough ICX to convert back to ETH or anything else. It was left over coin dust. I have about 8 wallets with dust that are just sitting there. The only way they would ever be unfrozen is if the coin rose enough in price to allow a conversion. It just a funny side effect of the trading platforms and 6-digit precision.

1 comment:

  1. In order to coin exchange, you do not need to register, you do not need to make orders, you do not need to pay withdrawal fees. You check the rate - You pay your transaction - And awaiting, when it comes to your wallet address.

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