Balances and UTXOs

Your Bitcoin balance is calculated from the satoshis within the Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) under your control. Each UTXO corresponds to a specific amount of bitcoin that has been received but remains unspent. In addition to basic bitcoin, UTXOs can also carry Bitcoin metaprotocol assets such as Ordinal inscriptions, Runes, and BRC-20 tokens. Care must be taken because if a UTXO containing these assets is unwittingly used in a transaction, you may lose the attached assets.

While Bitcoin metaprotocol assets are most commonly associated with Taproot addresses, they can also be linked to Segwit addresses. The Oyl wallet diligently monitors all UTXOs to prevent the unintentional spending of these assets, specifically scanning for Runes, BRC-20 tokens, and inscriptions. Since UTXOs may hold other types of assets, it is crucial to use wallets that fully support these assets for all Bitcoin transactions.

The Oyl Wallet balances tab provides a view of your Bitcoin UTXOs to help you understand what Runes and Inscriptions are attached to your UTXOs.

1. Click on the Balances button to open the balences view.

In this wallet, there is a single UTXO containing satoshis valued at $0.51 located on a Native Segwit address. Additionally, there are spendable UTXOs totaling $63.29 on the Taproot address, labeled as "spendable" because they are free from other Bitcoin metaprotocol assets. There are also 84 UTXOs bearing inscriptions or Runes. Typically, UTXOs with metaprotocol assets are set to a satoshi value of 546 to avoid being classified as "dust," ensuring they are viable for transactions without triggering minimum value thresholds. These should only be utilized in transactions specifically intended to transfer or spend the attached assets. The Oyl wallet manages the sending of metaprotocol assets automatically.

Sometimes, an asset may be linked to a UTXO with a significant satoshi value that you wish to spend without losing the asset. This situation requires "asset splitting." While the Oyl wallet does not currently support asset splitting, plans are in place to include this feature in a forthcoming update.