What happens if you sent coins to a wrong/non-existent address ?
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Like the subject says:
What happens if you sent by mistake some coins to a wrong or non-existent address ?
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You regret it immediately. I lost 255FTC last week sending them to my wallet. I was copy/pasting too fast and messed up one letter somehow. I would say ‘never again’ but I think we both know that I’m bound to repeat this. I just hope it’s not when FTC is above $1. :D
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Well… i just lost 0.72BTC… yes that hurts…
I somehow copy/pasted the wrong BTC deposit address into Multibit and noticed it when it didn’t show after some hours onto Cryptsy.
I have no idea how this could have happened because the address has to come from somewhere and I’m pretty much convinced i got it from the Cryptsy site itself but strangely enough its not there anymore… I checked all my other BTC accounts but this one is not among them.I checked the block chain and i can see the coins sitting on this unknown Bitcoin address… annoying…
See i guess if someone is really lucky he/she would generate sometimes in the future this address and is surprised by this free ‘gift’… -
WOW, wait a minute what’s this… ??
I just checked the block chain again and the same amount I accidentally transferred is transferred away from this unknown address to another address… !!
So its actually a live BTC address but not used before my transfer and now its cleared again… ??There’s a lot of funds (500BTC) going into this same destination address…
What’s going on here…?
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Can you imagine coins just dropping into your wallet and you having no idea what happened? I bet that guy is as stumped as you are.
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[quote name=“MTRisner” post=“58213” timestamp=“1392043770”]
You regret it immediately. I lost 255FTC last week sending them to my wallet. I was copy/pasting too fast and messed up one letter somehow. I would say ‘never again’ but I think we both know that I’m bound to repeat this. I just hope it’s not when FTC is above $1. :D
[/quote]Addresses have a built in mechanism which prevents exactly this from happening, so I find it unlikely that you were off by one letter.
Specifically an address consists of:
1 version byte.
20 bytes of public key hash
4 bytes of sha256(version + pubkey)If you were to change 1 letter/number, you’d either change the version, making the address invalid, the pub key, making the checksum invalid, or the checksum itself… making the address invalid.
It’s much more likely you send them to a correct address you didn’t own.
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[quote name=“prensel” post=“58164” timestamp=“1392020054”]
Like the subject says:What happens if you sent by mistake some coins to a wrong or non-existent address ?
[/quote]There’s no such thing as a non-existent address. Any old random 20 bytes will function just fine as an address, so long as you prepend the version byte and postfix the checksum.
What you mean is, “an address to which I don’t own the private key for”. I imagine you can guess the answer to that: You can’t spend them because you don’t own the private key.
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[quote name=“prensel” post=“58259” timestamp=“1392064560”]
WOW, wait a minute what’s this… ??I just checked the block chain again and the same amount I accidentally transferred is transferred away from this unknown address to another address… !!
So its actually a live BTC address but not used before my transfer and now its cleared again… ??There’s a lot of funds (500BTC) going into this same destination address…
What’s going on here…?
[/quote]Mystery solved: You don’t own the private key to the address, but someone else does.
Out of curiosity, what’s the address?
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I did dig something further on the block chain…
It appears my BTC is sent to another address with 500BTC on it, following transactions this amount is split up in some 125BTC transactions and again split up in smaller 31BTC transactions…
very strange…Could it be that either cryptsy or coindup website (these where the only sites i was using at that time) is hacked so that false deposit addresses are displayed ???
Here’s my initial sent to address: 1EECsrVHx9K8kdWuQRp21kkwhRj6hTL5tg
I made the 0.712BTC transaction. -
[quote name=“prensel” post=“58274” timestamp=“1392068074”]
Could it be that either cryptsy or coindup website (these where the only sites i was using at that time) is hacked so that false deposit addresses are displayed ???
[/quote]Anything is possible. If that’s the case, it should be trivial to verify that they gave you the wrong address to send to. You can show them, “Hey, look, this is where you said to deposit, look, here’s my transaction, please credit my account.”
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I already sent both sites an email te clear this matter.
Did you follow the transactions Kevlar ?
I find it strange that my transaction is part of an exactly 125BTC transaction with many other accounts and that 4 of these 125BTC transactions are transferred again onto another 500BTC and the split up again in smaller parts… -
[quote name=“prensel” post=“58274” timestamp=“1392068074”]
I did dig something further on the block chain…It appears my BTC is sent to another address with 500BTC on it, following transactions this amount is split up in some 125BTC transactions and again split up in smaller 31BTC transactions…
very strange…Could it be that either cryptsy or coindup website (these where the only sites i was using at that time) is hacked so that false deposit addresses are displayed ???
Here’s my initial sent to address: 1EECsrVHx9K8kdWuQRp21kkwhRj6hTL5tg
I made the 0.712BTC transaction.
[/quote]
Funny you should say that (well definitely not funny). I was transferring some BTC to, or from, Cryptsy today. I double-checked the address and it wasn’t as expected. I always check first and last 5 characters and have a scan over the entire address side by side before I make any transaction.I thought it was very weird (as I said I can’t remember the exact operation I was doing) but your post has definitely resonated with what happened. I’m ultra-paranoid about cryptos and I always double-check before I click send.
Sorry about your loss. That’s not small change.
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Okay, so you saw this on Cryptsy ?
So i’m not the only one…I’m very convinced I copy/pasted the address from Cryptsy last night (but it was 02:30AM or something…).
So could this be a hack on Cryptsy or are they silently transferring big sums of BTC away to other accounts ?? -
[quote name=“prensel” post=“58289” timestamp=“1392070317”]
Okay, so you saw this on Cryptsy ?
So i’m not the only one…I’m very convinced I copy/pasted the address from Cryptsy last night (but it was 02:30AM or something…).
So could this be a hack on Cryptsy or are they silently transferring big sums of BTC away to other accounts ??
[/quote]Looks like a wallet sweep to me. Cryptsy doesn’t store it’s funds at your deposit address, it usually sweeps them to cold-storage wallets, and when you request a withdraw it pays out from a hot-wallet. What you’re seeing is perfectly normal behavior for a shared-wallet infrastructure.
Like I said, if you got the address from Cryptsy, that’s easy to verify: Click on deposit for that coin. Is it that address? Unless you hit ‘generate new address’ it shouldn’t change.
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No its a different address now.
But like TheTribesman said, he also noticed strange deposit address behavior.
I’m waiting for response from cryptsy support, they seem to have more problems with deposits on DOGE also.Fingers crossed cryptsy is just having a internal problem and its not a hack or something.
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What about transferring BTC to an FTC address by mistake from BTC-e?
I transferred 1.7 BTC to my FTC wallet by mistake, from BTC-e, last night…
I’ve put in a support request, ever think I’ll see it again?
You’d be surprised how similar the two addresses looked.
OK I just checked both addresses, they don’t look similar at all, I was being an idiot…
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[quote name=“Ignition75” post=“58582” timestamp=“1392158136”]
What about transferring BTC to an FTC address by mistake from BTC-e?I transferred 1.7 BTC to my FTC wallet by mistake, from BTC-e, last night…
I’ve put in a support request, ever think I’ll see it again?
You’d be surprised how similar the two addresses looked.
OK I just checked both addresses, they don’t look similar at all, I was being an idiot…
[/quote]Bitcoin network version is 0x0, which is ‘1’ base58 encoded, FTC’s version is 0xE, which is ‘6’ or ‘7’ when base58 encoded, depending on the next byte. There’s no way BTC-e would let you send BTC to an address that started with 6 or 7. It would reject it as an invalid address.
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Well it left my account, so let’s see what happens…
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[quote name=“Kevlar” post=“58590” timestamp=“1392158684”]
[quote author=Ignition75 link=topic=7522.msg58582#msg58582 date=1392158136]
What about transferring BTC to an FTC address by mistake from BTC-e?I transferred 1.7 BTC to my FTC wallet by mistake, from BTC-e, last night…
I’ve put in a support request, ever think I’ll see it again?
You’d be surprised how similar the two addresses looked.
OK I just checked both addresses, they don’t look similar at all, I was being an idiot…
[/quote]Bitcoin network version is 0x0, which is ‘1’ base58 encoded, FTC’s version is 0xE, which is ‘6’ or ‘7’ when base58 encoded, depending on the next byte. There’s no way BTC-e would let you send BTC to an address that started with 6 or 7. It would reject it as an invalid address.
[/quote]Hold on dude, you’re right, it wasn’t a FTC address… WTF? Hold up let me try to see what I did…
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Ahhhhh HA!
It was my Cryptsy BTC deposit address, damn it’s taking a long time to show up…
