Gavin Andresen - 2011-05-09 00:05:14

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They tend to get put back together when you send larger payments.

The algorithm that the current bitcoin client uses isn't the best possible algorithm for deciding when to combine or split coins; ideally, it would have some notion of how big your average transaction would be, and when sending coins it might split change or combine extra coins to make change that is about that big (so the next time you make a transaction there are old, previous, high-priority transactions it can use).

If you ask nicely, I bet tcatm or somebody else will create a little web service that could tell you how long you have to wait for a 0.10 (or whatever) coin to mature before you can send it without a fee.