How to send and receive digital dollars without losing them

Sending digital dollars takes four things: a token, an address, a network and an amount. The two tokens you’re likely to meet are USDT, issued by Tether, and USDC, issued by Circle. The network carries a transfer in seconds or minutes, and then it’s done. Both issuers use the same words in their terms: transactions in their tokens “are not reversible”. Circle adds that it can’t reverse or recall one, and that whoever sends USDC to the wrong address bears the loss. There’s no bank in the middle to catch a mistake, so every check is yours, and every one comes before you send.

A token, an address, a network and an amount

Each issuer issues its token separately on many blockchains, and the two lists aren’t the same. Circle issues USDC on 38 as of September 2026, according to its own list, among them Ethereum, Solana, Base and Arbitrum. Tether issues USDT on 13 as of November 2026, according to its list, among them Tron, Ethereum and Solana, and nearly all of it sits on two: in November 2026, about 52% of the USDT in circulation was on Tron and 46% on Ethereum, by Tether’s figures. Tron is on Tether’s list and not on Circle’s; Base and Arbitrum are on Circle’s and not on Tether’s. A transfer happens on a single network, the same for whoever sends and whoever receives. The address alone doesn’t tell you which.

Ethereum and the networks built to work like it, such as Base, Arbitrum, Polygon and Avalanche, all use Ethereum’s address format: 0x followed by 40 letters and numbers. An ordinary wallet has the same address on every one of them. Base and Arbitrum are layer 2s, networks that run on top of Ethereum and rely on it for their security. Solana and Tron are networks of their own, each with its own address format; on Tron, an address is 34 characters long and starts with T. Tether’s list calls USDT on Ethereum an ERC20 token and on Tron a TRC20 token, after each network’s token standard, labels you may see where you pick a network.

An exchange adds more to match. It gives you a deposit address for each token and each network it supports, and it supports only some. Kraken, for one, lists two kinds of USDC on Polygon and on Arbitrum, native USDC, which Circle issues, and USDC.e, and two kinds of USDT on Optimism. The token and the network have to be the same on both sides: a deposit of one coin to another coin’s address “will not be credited”, CoinEx says.

What happens on the wrong network

The money goes to the same address, on the network you picked. Whether you get it back depends on who controls that address there:

• Your own wallet, on another Ethereum-style network. The tokens are there. As MetaMask’s help explains, the same recovery phrase gives the same address on all these networks, so switching the wallet to that network shows them. Moving them back takes a little of that network’s own coin, for the fee.
• An exchange. It’s up to the exchange, and it may not be possible. Kraken says not every deposit sent to the wrong place can be recovered, and that deposits on networks it doesn’t support probably can’t be. When it can return one, it charges 200 USD for a token it doesn’t list, and 500 USD if the network isn’t one it supports either.
• A smart contract wallet. A multisig, or any other wallet run by a contract, exists only on the networks where it was set up. On any other, its address may belong to no one, or to whoever sets up a wallet there first. In June 2022, The Block reported what became of 20 million tokens that the foundation behind Optimism, a layer 2, had sent to a trading firm. The firm had given the address of a multisig it ran on Ethereum but hadn’t set up on Optimism, and before it could, an attacker set one up at that address, with its own settings, and took control of the tokens.
• An address from another kind of network. Tokens sent to an address on a network that isn’t Ethereum-style are likely gone for good, MetaMask says.

Don’t expect the issuer to help. Circle tells the companies that deal with it directly that sending funds on the wrong blockchain “results in permanent loss”. Tether’s terms leave the risk with whoever sends: once you send USDT to an address, “whether intentionally or by a fraudulent or accidental transaction”, you accept that you may lose it “indefinitely or permanently”.

The address you copy from your own history

Addresses are too long to remember, so people copy them, often from their own list of past transfers. Address poisoning is built on that habit. Right after you send to someone, an attacker creates an address that starts and ends with the same characters as theirs, and sends you something from it: a transfer of zero, a tiny amount or a fake token. A transfer of zero can even appear in your history as one you sent, so the fake looks like an address you’ve paid before. The next time you copy, you may take the attacker’s.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University counted 270 million poisoning attempts on Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain between July 2022 and June 2024, aimed at 17 million targets. Of those, 6,633 worked, costing at least 83.8 million dollars, and the study counted only stablecoins.

A test transfer doesn’t stop it. In December 2025, someone sent a test of 50 USDT to the address they meant to pay. An attacker’s script immediately produced an address with the same first five and last four characters, and sent small transfers from it to their wallet. The full amount went out 26 minutes after the test: nearly 50 million dollars in USDT, to the look-alike, most likely copied from their history, according to The Block. The test had proved the right address. The money went to a different one.

Malware can make the same swap as you paste. In March 2023, Kaspersky reported a fake version of the Tor browser that watched for wallet addresses copied to the clipboard and replaced them with the attackers’ own. It had reached more than 15,000 users in 52 countries, and taken about 400,000 dollars so far that year.

Either way, what you paste is a real address, only not the one you meant. Many wallets have shown only the first and last few characters of an address, the very ones a look-alike copies, so only comparing the whole address with its source catches it.

Is it really USDT or USDC?

A token called USDT or USDC isn’t always Tether’s or Circle’s.

Some networks carry bridged USDC: a token “created by a third party”, in Circle’s words, backed by USDC locked in a contract on another blockchain. On Arbitrum, Circle began issuing its own USDC in June 2023, and the bridged version that had circulated until then was renamed USDC.e. Exchanges that take both, Kraken among them, list them as two different tokens. Neither issuer supports such copies. Circle’s terms say it supports only USDC and has no obligation to support copies or wrappers of it; Tether’s, that tokens made by “wrapping” or “bridging” USDT “are not Tether Tokens” and can’t be redeemed with Tether. And a token called USDT circulates on networks that aren’t on Tether’s list: Kraken takes deposits of one on Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon.

A bridged token is worth what the bridge holds. In July 2023, about 130 million dollars in crypto was drained from Multichain’s bridges, according to CoinDesk, including nearly everything its bridge to Fantom held. The bridged USDC on Fantom, which those holdings backed, fell to about 50 cents, according to DL News.

Then there are fakes, since anyone can create a token and give it a name that looks like a real one’s. In the Carnegie Mellon study, 118 million of the 270 million poisoning attempts used counterfeit tokens.

Each network’s USDC comes from a single contract, and Circle publishes the list; Tether publishes its own, with the contract on each network, for USDT. If your wallet shows a token you didn’t expect, compare its contract with the issuer’s list before you move it. The lists change, too: Circle stopped issuing USDC on Tron in February 2024, and Tether stopped issuing USDT on five networks, EOS and Algorand among them, in September 2025. To take USDC from one network to another, Circle runs its own service, the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, launched in April 2023: it destroys the USDC on the first network and creates the same amount on the second.

What it costs, and when it’s final

Each of these networks charges a fee for every transfer, in its own coin rather than in digital dollars: ETH on Ethereum, Base and Arbitrum, SOL on Solana and TRX on Tron. On Tron, USDT is run by a smart contract, and every call to one uses what the network calls energy: an account gets energy by staking TRX, and when it has too little, the network burns TRX from its balance instead. On any of these networks, a wallet that holds nothing but digital dollars can’t move them on its own. Some apps pay the network fee for their users, and since January 2025 Circle has offered apps a way to let users pay it in USDC, starting with Arbitrum and Base.

Network	Address	Issued there	Fee paid in	Final after
Ethereum	0x and 40 letters and numbers	USDT and USDC	ETH	15 to 19 minutes
Base	The same as on Ethereum	USDC	ETH	15 to 19 minutes
Arbitrum	The same as on Ethereum	USDC	ETH	15 to 19 minutes
Solana	A format of its own	USDT and USDC	SOL	About 17 seconds
Tron	34 characters, starting with T	USDT	TRX	About 1 minute

Final, here, is what Circle waits for before it treats a transfer as done: the point where it’s “unlikely to be reversed”. On Base and Arbitrum that takes as long as on Ethereum, because Circle waits for Ethereum’s own blocks. On Tron, where Circle doesn’t issue USDC, a block is final once it’s “solidified”, typically in about a minute, according to Tron’s documentation, and after that it can’t be replaced.

Exchanges then wait for confirmations of their own before they credit a deposit, and set a minimum for each network. Below it, a deposit may be lost: Kraken marks it as failed and says the funds are lost for good, even if a later deposit meets the minimum, and it applies the minimum after network fees. CoinEx, on the other hand, credits it along with a second deposit that meets the minimum on its own. Some exchanges also ask, on certain networks, for a memo or tag, a code that tells them which account a deposit is for; without it, Kraken warns, a deposit may not be credited.

Side by side

Mistake	What happens	Can it be undone?
The wrong Ethereum-style network, to your own wallet	The tokens sit at your address on that network	Yes: switch the wallet to that network, with some of its coin for the fee
The wrong network, to an exchange	The deposit isn’t credited	Sometimes, if the exchange can return it, often for a fee
The wrong token, to an exchange	The deposit isn’t credited	Sometimes, through the exchange’s support, often for a fee
The wrong network, to a smart contract wallet	The address may belong to no one there, or to whoever claims it first	Only if the owner can set the wallet up there first
A look-alike address	The money goes to the attacker	Not unless the attacker sends it back
A bridged or fake token	It’s worth what stands behind it, and the receiver may not take it	Not by the issuer, which supports only its own
Less than an exchange’s minimum	The deposit isn’t credited	At some exchanges, with a second deposit; at others, never
No memo where one is asked	The deposit may not be credited	Often, through the exchange’s support

What to do

• Agree on the token and the network first. When you receive, give both with the address: USDT on Tron, say, or USDC on Solana. When you send, ask for both. If the other side is an exchange, use a network it lists for that token, and if it lists two kinds of the token there, pick the one you’re sending.
• Take the address from its source. Scan the receiver’s QR code, copy it from their app or message, or use an entry you saved in your wallet’s address book after checking it. Never copy it from your transaction history.
• Check the whole address after you paste it, not just the first and last characters, which are the ones a look-alike copies. If the amount is large, read it back to the receiver over another channel.
• Send a small test to any new address, above the exchange’s minimum deposit, and wait for the receiver to confirm it arrived. Then send the rest to the address you tested, from your saved entry, not from your history.
• Make sure it’s the issuer’s own token. If a wallet or an exchange shows USDC.e, two kinds of the same token, or a token on a network its issuer doesn’t list, compare the contract with the issuer’s list: Circle’s for USDC, Tether’s for USDT.
• Keep some of the network’s coin for the fee, TRX on Tron or ETH on Ethereum, or use an app that pays it.
• Ignore transfers you didn’t expect. A zero or a tiny amount from an address that looks like one you know is the setup for address poisoning, not a payment.
• If it goes wrong, look first for the tokens at your own address on the other network. Then write to the exchange’s support from its own site or app, with the transaction’s ID. Ignore anyone who contacts you offering to get them back: MetaMask says they’re scammers, and the FBI counted more than 9.9 million dollars lost between February 2023 and February 2024 by victims of crypto scams who were then taken in by fake law firms offering to recover their money. The guide on crypto scams goes through the rest.

How you send money is one question; where you keep savings is another, and the guide on hardware wallets, multisig and collaborative custody sets out a test for it.