I have the very strong impression in my mind that [PVMihalache] in one of his numerous articles in his blog [Mind Puzzle], described his experience of losing his tokens while he was about to take his son from the school after sending them to the contract address of the token instead of his Metamask wallet. Not sure in which article though because he has published numerous articles and I have lost the counting but please feel free to post the link on the comments sector if you have bookmarked it.
Ancient Greeks Philosophers kept reminding
Το δις εξαμαρτείν ουκ ανδρός σοφού
No wise man makes the same mistake twice
And I remembered very well the case of [PVMihalache] and it was always in my mind to double check the withdrawal address when I kept moving tokens and funds between my Metamask wallet and my Binance account. And these 2 locations, are normally the only ones that I normally use to move my funds avoiding mistakes of the past sending tokens and especially my BTC to scam destinations as it is described in the article BTC Airdrop Conflict. Nevertheless, If you only move funds exclusively only between these 2 destinations and not allowing to yourself to add a 3rd destination then you reduce significantly the probability to mess with scammers again.
Unfortunately, recently it appeared that recently I went very close in repeating not my mistake but [PVMihalache]'s and this old story goes like this.
It was the previous bearish period of mid May 2021 following Elon Musk's tweet that Bitcoin isn't environmentally friendly when the BTC and the rest of Altcoins initiated a spectacular dip into more let's say normal levels than the previous lunar pumped ones, that I have decided to make my move and buy some extra BTCST tokens that have been remarkably cheap in order to stake them into the platform yielding BEP-20 BTC and BTCST, just like I had already done with my BTCST tokens that were dropped through the Binance LaunchPool event the previous January.
For my bad luck and out of FOMO, I wanted to make sure that BTCST token will be correctly added into my BSC section of Metamask, so I went into GoinGecko and copy pasted the BITCOIN STANDARD HASHRATE (BTCST) token contract address 0x78650b139471520656b9e7aa7a5e9276814a38e9 into Metamask AGAIN in order to make sure that the funds will appear immediately into my account. Something that proved stupid even for a newbie as it was already done since my initial deposit of my LaunchPool earnings and staking into the BTCST dapp on 2nd May 2021. But mistakes don't happens only from newbies but from more experienced users when they relaxed and feel comfortable that they can perform things with easiness without a lot of thinking. This is when car accidents happen too.
And surprisingly since i was currently on a rush and I wanted to start the withdrawal process before leaving for work so that my tokens will be already there when i would have been back and ready for staking, i logged into the Binance app in order to start the withdrawal process and guess what!!! When i pasted the withdrawal address, i pasted the BTCST contract address 0x78650b139471520656b9e7aa7a5e9276814a38e9 instead of my Metamask address and blindly without checking the notification email from Binance in order to add the verification code, i executed the transaction.
YET, and I say THANKFULLY YET as soon as i activated the transaction confirmation and received the notification from Binance, I noticed that the ending of the withdrawal address was different from the one of my Metamask address. Everything happened so quickly and I had to think FAST a potential recovery plan as the transaction takes only 15 confirmations in order to be executed and every second was important. My first though was to contact Binance Support but i know that they are sooo slow in responding and LUCKILY after checking again the notification email to confirm that indeed i have sent the funds into BTCST contract address i noticed in the end of the notification email stating:
If you did not initiate this operation, click here to disable your account and then click the link below to contract Binance Customer Service.
That's what I did, i clicked the link and managed to disable my account immediately hoping that if my account had been disabled then any pending transactions would have been also voided and initiated a communication with Binance Support Service to explain them the situation which correctly I wasn't expecting them to respond quickly enough. So just before i left for work, I also went at BTCST dapp to try finding any customer support service there where I have found a customer support email and typed quickly my request about the situation as follows:
I spend my whole time at work having in my mind what could have happened with the withdrawal and the fact that i had just wasted 100 BUSD into a stupid foolish transaction due to my impatience. The response that I received from both customer service support Teams when i returned home were even horrible and frightening. First the BTCST Customer Support responded that "I need to contact Binance Customer Support to resolve the issue" and secondly, Binance Customer Support simply provided me a generic cynical response that "the transaction confirmations are initiated as soon as the verification codes are being entered into the withdrawal process", without providing any further help.
With all of my hopes of recovering my funds lost, I re-enabled after 24 hours my Binance account when i realised that my precious BTCST tokens were STILL into my Binance Spot account and that the transaction with a kind of magical way has been REJECTED and that all that was lost was the transaction fee of 0.0033 BTCST and huge amount of human liquids and anxiety!!!
That was a horrible lesson and a so lucky escape. I don't believe that there will be NO other opportunity in another 1000 years that a wrong transaction like this will be rejected in the whole blockchain !!!
Always DOUBLE-CHECK the withdrawal address before executing a transaction, otherwise your funds will be lost forever in the blockchain. And there is no escape plan !!!
Finally, i would like to point out here another weakness of the Binance platform, apart from the slow and unhelpful customer support service. This is the lack of an address directory just like the majority of blockchain wallets have where users can add once forever the blockchain addresses that they usually use in order to avoid sending their funds to the wrong ones. Not only I have seen similar address directories in Metamask or Uphold but even in Faucet Pay there is a possibility of saving the withdrawal addresses for different cryptocurrencies but apparently for an unknown reason Binance doesn't have one although they keep being innovative adding so many features in the platform but missing the basics. An address directory in Binance would have been so helpful to avoid similar mistakes like the one i described above sending the funds to the wrong destination either this is a wrong recipient, a scam or a blockchain that could cost significant amount of funds when the solution would have been so easy. If there was a possibility to SAVE my Metamask address into Binance, situations like the above could have been easily avoided.
***Disclaimer: All information found on this article is for informational purposes only. I do not provide any personal investment advice so please make your own research before proceeding to any investment/trading action.***
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