What is Cryptocurrency Dust?

Cryptoassets are high-risk investments and may not be suitable for all investors. Their prices can be highly volatile, and you could lose some or all of the money you invest.

Cryptoassets are not regulated in the same way as traditional investments and are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). Protection from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is limited.

During periods of extreme market volatility, liquidity may be reduced, which can affect your ability to buy or sell crypto at your desired price.

You should take time to understand how crypto works and the risks involved before investing. For more information, visit IG’s Crypto Risks page.

After selling a cryptocurrency position, you may notice a tiny remainder shown as £0.00 in your portfolio. This is known as “dust” and can occur for certain tokens.

What is cryptocurrency dust?

Dust refers to a very small amount of cryptocurrency (less than £0.01) that may remain in your portfolio after you sell your entire holding of a token.

This amount:

Displays as £0.00 in your portfolio
Has no financial impact on your account
Doesn’t affect your ability to trade other assets
May keep the token visible in your portfolio list, even though the position is effectively closed

Why does dust occur?

Dust can occur due to differences in decimal place precision between systems.

Here’s how it works:

Prior to our migration away from our Uphold partnership, some tokens could be held and traded to 8 decimal places (for example, 0.12345678 XRP).
Under our IG fully managed crypto offering, certain tokens can only be sold to fewer decimal places (for example, 5 decimal places means you can sell 0.12345 XRP).

When you sell 100% of your holding in an affected token, the system sells the maximum amount allowed but can’t process the final few decimal places. This small remainder is known as dust.

Example:

You hold: 0.12345678 XRP
Maximum sellable: 0.12345 XRP
Dust remainder: 0.00000678 XRP (shown as £0.00)

Which tokens are affected?

Most major cryptocurrencies are not affected and continue to support higher sell precision:

Token	Name
BTC	Bitcoin
ETH	Ethereum
SOL	Solana
ADA	Cardano
AVAX	Avalanche
DOT	Polkadot
LTC	Litecoin
XLM	Stellar

All other tokens migrated from the Uphold partnership have reduced sell precision, which means dust may appear after selling. The exact precision varies by token and may change over time.

Does dust affect my account value?

No. Dust amounts are worth less than £0.01 and have no meaningful financial impact.

Your portfolio valuation remains accurate, and we maintain full-precision internal records of all cryptocurrency holdings.

Can I remove dust from my portfolio?

At the moment, dust balances can’t be manually removed.

We’re exploring options to periodically clear small residual balances from customer portfolios. If this is introduced, we’ll share an update — please note that no timelines are confirmed.

Who might see dust in their portfolio?

You may see dust if:

You previously held crypto on our legacy service and have migrated to our licensed crypto offering
You transfer cryptocurrency into your account with higher precision than the sell limits supported for that token