Sending crypto is the one operation in this industry with no undo button. No chargebacks, no fraud department, no “are you sure?” dialog that saves you after the fact — a confirmed transaction to the wrong place is a donation. The good news: the process itself is simple, and nearly every disaster traces back to skipping one of about five checks. This guide is the checklist, in order, with the failure mode flagged at each step.
Before anything: addresses and networks
A crypto address is a long string of characters — Bitcoin addresses often start with “bc1”, Ethereum-style addresses with “0x” — that works like an account number anyone can pay into. The catch: the same asset can live on several different networks, and the address alone doesn’t always reveal which one the sender plans to use. USDT is the classic trap — it exists on Ethereum (ERC-20), Tron (TRC-20), Solana, BNB Chain and more. Sending USDT while selecting the wrong network is the single most common way beginners lose money: the funds leave your wallet and arrive on a chain the recipient isn’t watching, or can’t access at all. Recovery then ranges from annoying to impossible. Rule zero, before every send: the asset and the network must both match exactly what the recipient specified.
Step 1: Get the address — and verify it
Always copy-paste the address or scan a QR code; never type one by hand. Then compare the first six and last six characters against what the recipient actually sent you. This is not paranoia: clipboard-hijacking malware exists that silently swaps a copied crypto address for the attacker’s, and the better strains generate lookalikes matching the opening characters — which is why you check both ends. Also be suspicious of any address that arrives by DM, email or a search ad: sending to the wrong person is indistinguishable from sending to a scammer, and both are final. The wider pattern library lives in how to spot crypto scams.
Step 2: Check whether a memo or tag is required
Some networks — XRP, XLM, EOS and a few others — use a second field: a memo, tag or destination tag. Exchanges run one shared deposit address for thousands of customers and rely on the memo to know which account to credit. Send without it (or with a typo) and your funds land in the exchange’s pool unassigned — support can often recover them, but expect days of waiting, a fee, and paperwork. When a wallet or exchange shows you a memo field, it is not optional decoration.
Step 3: Send a small test amount first
For any first-time address or any sum that would hurt, send a small amount — a few dollars — and confirm it arrives before sending the rest. Yes, you pay the network fee twice. It’s the cheapest insurance in finance. A stablecoin on a low-fee network makes a good test vehicle when both sides support it. The only defensible skip is a trivial transfer between your own wallets — and even then, doing the test once teaches you the exact flow for when it matters.
Step 4: Fees and timing — set expectations
Every transfer pays a network fee, and costs differ wildly by chain and congestion. Bitcoin and Ethereum mainnet can run from cents to several dollars (Ethereum’s fee market: gas fees explained and the glossary entry); layer-2s, Solana and Tron usually cost fractions of a cent to a few cents. Exchanges add their own withdrawal fee on top of the network fee — check the total before choosing which network to use. After you hit send, the transaction enters the mempool and waits for confirmation: Bitcoin blocks land roughly every 10 minutes and many services want 1–6 confirmations before crediting; Ethereum takes seconds to minutes; Tron and Solana are faster still. Track it yourself by pasting the transaction ID into a block explorer — the public receipt that settles any argument with support.
Step 5: If it went wrong
- Wrong network, sent to an exchange: open a support ticket immediately, with the transaction ID. Many exchanges can recover funds sent on a network they support but that doesn’t match your deposit address (say, USDT via BNB Chain to an ERC-20 address), sometimes for a fee. Recovery is a courtesy, not a guarantee — and if the exchange doesn’t support that chain at all, it’s usually final.
- Wrong network, sent to your own wallet: often fixable yourself. All EVM-compatible chains (Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum and friends) share the same address format — one private key controls the same address on every EVM chain. Add the network you actually used in your wallet app (or import the wallet into one that supports it) and the funds are usually sitting there, unharmed.
- Right network, wrong address: almost certainly unrecoverable unless you happen to know the owner. This is why steps 1 and 3 exist.
- Someone talked you into sending it: document everything, report it, and treat any “recovery agent” who contacts you as scam number two — see crypto scam recovery.
The 60-second pre-send ritual
- Recipient confirmed the asset and the network; both match your send screen exactly.
- Address pasted (never typed); first six and last six characters verified.
- Memo/tag filled in wherever the field is shown.
- Fee and total checked; small test send done first for any new address.
- Transaction ID saved; arrival verified on a block explorer.
Where to go next
No wallet yet? Start with how to set up a crypto wallet, then protect it with seed phrase storage. Moving money the other way? How to buy Bitcoin covers getting funds in, and how to sell crypto covers getting them out.
This guide is educational only and is not financial advice. Crypto transactions are irreversible and you can lose everything you send — read our full disclaimer.