A few weeks ago, my brain entered in the distraction mode in the most inconvenient time and I accidentally sent my biggest payout on Steemit so far to the wrong account! I simply sent SBD to a Steem wallet. If you've been there you know how it feels. It's a mixture of suicidal thoughts with the wish you have the power to go back in time while you ponder why bad things happen to good people.
To make things worse, I search on Google, Youtube, Steemit, all places possible, if there was a way to recover the coins, because the message in any transaction window is not very optimistic:
Depositing tokens to this address other than ____ may result in your funds being lost.
I didn't find anything on the web showing me how to proceed in this case, only questions of people as desperate as I asking if the recovery was possible.
After taking a deep breath and suggesting to myself to keep calm, I decided to contact Bittrex, the site I sent my SBD to. I explained briefly the situation and they sent me a standard reply that said something not very encouraging:
If you have sent your coins to another coins address these coins may be recoverable, but may not be recoverable as well.
I kept my hopes and focused my thought in the first case. (although "may not" kept echoing in my head!)
All I had to do was send them some information such as the coin name, amount of coins and the address I deposited. And a last item that almost made me lose my hopes to have my coins back: The transaction hash of the sent coins.
For someone who was only a few weeks old in the blockchain's world, I found myself completely lost. I googled and found out that transaction hash is the same as the transaction ID. Basically, every move you make on the blockchain receives a code. And Bittrex needed this number.
But where in the world would I find it? Googled again. I found some outdated posts explaining that the transaction hash could easily be found on steemd.com. But to crowned my bad luck, the page where the number sequence could be found was down.
My last hope was to ask on Steemit. Of course someone here would know. So I made a post asking how to find id transaction without steemd.com.
And that's where my luck started to change. A blessed soul showed me the way to steembd.com.
To find the transaction hash, or transaction iD or txid (it comes with all those names) of any transaction, all you have to do is login to your account on steemdb.com. Find the transaction in the historic. Then click on those tiny numbers located in the left.
( example)
In the new page, find the transaction again and locate the txid
Done!
I found the transaction hash I needed and sent to Bittrex. Then all I have to do was wait.
I was ready to forget about it for awhile since the process of recovering the coins takes at least 2 weeks. But surprisingly, after 5 days I received this message from Bittrex.
Don't worry Bittrex, I'm now triple checking every address before I click confirm!!
Actually, I should be checking 5 times at least because according to a new Bittrex deposit recovery policy released August 3, they won't be attempting to recover coins sent to the wrong address anymore, unless the amount exceeds $5000 (five-thousand-dollars).
I'm not sure if other sites, like Poloniex, are following the same policy.
But needless I recovered my coins in perfect timing!