On 12 Sep, CZ_Binance (Changpeng Zhao, the founder & CEO of Binance) tweeted...

A guy just sent 800 #BNB ($20,000) to a smart contract address by mistake on Binance Smart Chain. It is effectively burned (permanently stuck).

After reading this, some immediate questions that came to mind were: How did this happen? Is this his life savings? A year’s worth of salary? Was this borrowed money? $20,000 is a substantial amount.

Then followed by these questions –

How could it have happened? Could it be prevented? Is it recoverable? Is it possible to have a fail-safe?

For many here, smart contract transaction is a piece of cake because you are familiar with how blockchain works. However, as cryptocurrency becomes more widely accepted and more people utilizes cryptocurrencies, mistakes like this will be more prevalent. As it is, if you do a search for “sending cryptocurrency to wrong address”, you’ll find plenty of cases where people have made this mistake.

To bring home the point, last week I made a transfer of $SAND to Metamask Wallet. I wanted to purchase a piece of land at the Sandbox's last LAND Presale (Round 4.2) event.

I’d bought the $SAND tokens at Binance and did the transfer. I clicked send and the smart contract transaction indicated its pending and after a few minutes showed completed. However, the exchange stated there was an error or something to that effect. I can’t recall what error message exactly but something to do with the receiving address. With a pounding heart, I checked my Metamask Wallet and the token wasn’t there! There’s NO $SAND tokens! Obviously, I panicked. What should I do? I had followed the instructions exactly as indicated at the Sandbox guide.

The logical thing was to seek help from Metamask as I’d double and triple checked the receiving address before sending. I went to the Metamask site and look for support. Unfortunately, Metamask does not have chat support so I had to submit a query, which means I have to wait for an email reply. FOUR days later, I received the following reply

Hello there,

If you sent funds to that address of that service you need to contact them:

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Experience had taught me that if you are relying on an email reply support, you had better start doing some research on your own to find the answer. It’ll probably be faster and in my case, it was. So, when I received the email reply, I’d already discovered the solution and I KNEW at that point that Metamask support should have known the solution too as it was part of the functionality within the wallet that had caused the issue.

What I discovered was that because $SAND is a new token, I need to manually add $SAND token option to the wallet before the deposit will show up.  I did that in my Metamask Wallet and Voila! The balance showed up! What a relief.

My point is this - even the technical support didn’t know the answer. That’s not very comforting for noobs.

Let's get back to the guy who sent $20,000 to the wrong address by mistake. I for one empathize with the guy. I hope someone who’s in the know and able can help him out.

So, is there a lesson to be learnt here? In my case, I was fortunate that it's something that I could solve and the transaction didn't end up in crypto limbo.

Coming back to the questions I asked above regarding sending crypto to wrong address,

How could it have happened? Could it be prevented? Is it recoverable? Is it possible to have a fail-safe?

I still don't have the answers. Maybe you can enlighten me.

Regardless, my personal experience has taught me 2 important things. You see, in the cryptocurrency world, you are constantly cautioned and reminded almost on a daily basis the following:

1. Not your private key, not your money

2. Make sure you send your cryptocurrency to the RIGHT address!

I for one will remember the above 2 warnings. There is a reason why they are repeated so often.

Stay safe you all. Keep your PRIVATE key private and DOUBLE & TRIPLE check addresses in ALL your transactions!

Do like and follow if you've enjoyed the article. By the way, I have nothing against Metamask Wallet. I will continue to use it. It's a great wallet.

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One of my reasons for starting to write is to learn. I’m open to constructive feedback and ideas on how to improve my writing. Feel free to drop me a comment. Of course, the tip is a motivating factor to write more.

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