I think I see where you are coming from but that is a bit too imprecise.
There is a standardness rule that prevents creation of outputs with small amounts. The concrete amounts differ per output type: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/41082/5406
Additionally, UTXOs with a low amount may cost more to add to a transaction than their own amount at some feerate. I describe such UTXOs as having a negative effective value at a given feerate. E.g. a P2WPKH input weighs 68 vB, so a 500 sat P2WPKH output would be able to pay for itself at up to 7.35 s/vB. It's own cost would eat a significant proportion of it's value, though, so I would not recommend receiving such small UTXOs.
Yes, but my thinking here is entirely hinging on the availability of out-of-band payments in a currency that is not btc (and expected to lose value over time in relation to btc, and also in which miners need to pay their bills--all of which are true of miners today).
If I had a dust output in Jan 2023 and I could pay a miner in fiat 2x the fiat value of the utxo to use it in a transaction that combines it with a bigger utxo, it would have made sense for me to do that.
Similarly, if I expect the value of btc in fiat terms to increase in the future, I should be willing to pay more than the current fiat value of any dust output now as long as I can pay in fiat.
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Even if you pay out of band, you have to compete with the fees other transactions are bidding.
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Right, but I'm not competing with fee rates ten years from now, but I CAN make a prediction about fiat price ten years from now.
I only have to compete with fee rates now. And some people paying fee rates now may have a less hopeful opinion of btc's fiat value in the future than I do. It becomes an arbitrage case (if I'm right about my future fiat price prediction).
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Why would you pay more in fees than the UTXO is worth? Shouldn't you rather buy more bitcoin instead then?
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