9. Combining and Splitting Value.
Although it would be possible to
handle coins individually, it would be unwieldy to make a
separate transaction for every cent in a transfer. To allow value to be split and combined,
transactions contain multiple
inputs and outputs. Normally there will be either a single input from a larger previous transaction or multiple inputs combining smaller amounts, and at most
two outputs: one for the
payment, and one
returning the change, if any, back to the sender.
It should be noted that fan-out, where a transaction depends on several transactions, and those transactions depend on many more, is not a problem here. There is never the need to extract a complete standalone copy of a transaction's history.
https://t.me/BitcoinWP/402