Today a feature was added to Binance that I have been waiting for, for months! It's the 'dust sweeping' feature that was often spoken of, to get rid of tiny fractions of crypto's that are otherwise untradeable, and too small to withdraw. You can now combine these fractions and sell them together for BNB tokens.
DUST
Most people use BNB tokens to pay for the fee, because they give a 50% discount. But if you don't use BNB tokens (perhaps you're only making a single trade?) you used to be in for some headaches! For example, you could buy 1 EOS token with some Bitcoin, and actually end up with 0.999 EOS tokens, since 0.1% needs to be paid for the trading fees.
Now, this wouldn't be so bad if this were the end of it, but Binance generally does not allow for trading of fractions of coins. It is possible to buy or sell 1 EOS token, but not buy or sell 0.999 EOS tokens, or anything other than a whole token.
In addition to this, Binance also has a minimum withdrawal limit. As a result, many people have fractions of various cryptocurrencies 'stuck' on the Binance exchange: too small an amount to sell (and impossible to buy a tiny fraction extra to round it up), and too small to withdraw. It has lead to a lot of criticism on Binance over the past months.
DUST SWEEP OPTION
Luckily these complains have not fallen on deaf ears! Binance continues to prove that they are a solid exchange with their eye on their customers, by adding the highly anticipated feature of being able to 'sweep' your dust, to sell it into a small stack of BNB tokens. You can find this option at the top of the Deposits & Withdrawals page.Basically what this option does is combine all of your cryptocurrencies that you have less than 0.001 BTC worth of. It will then bundle these, and you are given the option to sell these for BNB tokens. It's not quite the same as getting it back as BTC, but I think this is a very workable solution that will be acceptable by most users. I myself am happy that now I can stop being annoyed by the dust, and at least get the value back as BNB. Of course I already own some BNB for the trading fees, so this simply adds to the stack I already have. And it really cleans up my Binance portfolio too!
I made a screenshot of my own dust-sweeping on Binance to show you the next screen:
As you can see, I have a little bit of dust from various coins on Binance: RDN, WABI, XVG, ZRG. It's not worth much, but there's nothing else I can do with it. Fortunately I can now sweep it all together and sell it for 0.00445854 BNB. Should allow me a couple more 'free' trades that I otherwise wouldn't have (hell, with BNB's price rise I guess all my trades are free... I never need to buy extra).
After you click on the 'Exchange' button, a popup appears to ask you if you're sure and after you confirm it will make the trade.
How this works in the back-end, I am not sure, but I am guessing that Binance bundles these tiny orders together until they can fill a 'whole' coin order together at some point. There is probably some fee or premium that is collected in the process, and to safeguard against price fluctuations, but that is fine by me. I am happy to clean up my Binance portfolio! And now I can put my mind at ease that none of my money is lingering around!