A minimum withdrawal exists so that the network fee, the processing cost and the chain’s own rules do not swallow the amount being sent, and because those three things differ by coin, the minimum differs too. A bitcoin cash-out of two pounds on a busy day would pay more in fees than it delivers, so sites set a floor above the point where a withdrawal stops making sense. On a chain where the fee is a fraction of a penny, the floor can sit at a few pence. On Bitcoin, it usually sits between ten and fifty pounds’ worth.
Four things set the floor for each coin at roulette games with crypto cashiers, and each one puts a number on it.
- The fee floor – A withdrawal should deliver more than it costs to send. Sites set the minimum at a multiple of the typical fee, often ten to twenty times, so that the fee is under ten per cent of the amount, even on a busy day for bitcoin, at a typical fee of one to three pounds, which gives a minimum of around 20 to 50 pounds. For Litecoin, at a fee of pence, it gives a minimum of under a pound.
- Dust limits – Bitcoin and its relatives refuse to relay outputs below a threshold, 546 satoshis on Bitcoin, because such outputs cost more to spend than they hold. The network would reject a withdrawal below that. Sites set the minimum well above it, but the dust rule is why no bitcoin withdrawal minimum is ever a few hundred satoshis.
- Account rules on the chain – Polkadot removes accounts holding under one DOT, Cardano requires every output to carry around one ADA, and XRP once required accounts to hold a reserve of ten XRP, now one. A withdrawal below those figures either fails or destroys the coins, so the minimum is set at or above them.
- Processing cost – Every withdrawal passes screening, and those above a threshold pass a manual check. A site handling ten thousand withdrawals a month keeps the minimum high enough that the queue is not filled with amounts too small to be worth the staff time. This is the reason minimums on cheap chains are not zero.
Typical minimums, in the coin and in rough pound terms:
- Bitcoin – 0.0002 to 0.001 bitcoin, roughly 10 to 50 pounds, driven by the fee floor.
- Ethereum – 0.005 to 0.02 ether, roughly 10 to 40 pounds, driven by main-chain gas.
- Litecoin – 0.01 to 0.05 Litecoin, roughly 50 pence to 3 pounds.
- USDT and USDC on tron or solana – 5 to 20 dollars, driven by processing cost rather than fees.
- Dogecoin – 20 to 100 dogecoin, a few pounds.
- Polkadot – 1 to 2 DOT, set by the account rule.
- Bitcoin over the Lightning Network – often as low as 1,000 satoshis, under a pound, because there is no on-chain fee to cover.
The minimum is stated on the withdrawal page next to the fee, and both can change with network conditions. A balance below the minimum in one coin can usually be swapped inside the cashier to a coin with a lower floor and withdrawn that way, which is the standard route for clearing a small leftover off the table.
