Bitcoin Forum

I sent some nit coin from my coin base to my normal wallet but I think added the wrong addressing. Is there anyway to recover this. Maybe put the address I sent it to as a new address in my wallet? But how would I do that?

No. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. You cannot just take over an address by putting it in your wallet.

All you can do is find out who owns the address you sent to and am then to return the Bitcoin.

You should always double/triple check addresses.  Can you post the transaction ID or copy the address you think you sent the money to if the txid isn't available?


Is it possible he sent them to a non-existent address? (not sure whether Coinbase would let you do that or not though).

You can't send bitcoins to an invalid address, but if OP mistyped the address and somehow got a valid address then it can go through.

If by nonexistent you mean invalid address, then no. It's possible he sent the Bitcoin to an address for which no one owns the private key to, but that would be impossible to know.

The only way you can recover your bitcoins is if you can find the address where you sent wrongly.
You can try your luck, you can send 0.0001 btc and send a message during the transaction to the receiver asking him to get your coins back. This will depend on the honesty of the other person, always when that address exists and that's the only possibility to recover (highly unlikely).

There's no other way. If you don't remember the address that you sent wrong pretty much 100% you can't recover your coins.

I know but I don't know how Coinbase works. Does it give you some sort of an invalid address error if you typed in an incorrect/non-existent address or could it just deduct the coins from your balance whilst not actually 'officially' sending them. I seem to remember reading something like this happened on some other exchange or dice site a while back.

What is the address you sent the coins to?

Theres nothing you can do about that. Its already send to that address. You cant recover btc you already sent because its irreversible. Be careful next time when manually enter the address. Just copy carefully the whole address and paste it. Check if its the right address you copy before sending btc to the address.

I believe if it is an address that is mistyped it will be sent back once it is seen that bitcoin address does not go to any one wallet.

Oh. No, coinbase won't allow you to send bitcoins to an invalid address.

Is there a way to contact a person owning certain bitcoin address in case you made a mistake and send your money wrong way?
Can you attach some kind of message to bitcoin transaction?

You cant reverse any transaction  you made with bitcoin,  but if you send the btc to a email address theres a chance that the biycoin you send will bring back to you if,the email address has been registered to any bitcoin account.

Theres no way you can recover that coin that already been sent. The transaction is irreversible. Which means you cannot reverse or cancel the transaction. The only thing you can only do is to find the owner of that bitcoin address and ask the owner to return it. But the question is, how? Be careful next time. Whe  you are going to send bitcoins, make sure you put the address correctly.

that is just poor coding, and it is problem on a different layer. user clicks withdraw to 1InvalidAddress and on first layer system only handles the request in user's database and deducts that amount first then goes on another layer trying to send and surely it gets an error down there when making the tx and/or pushing it and they don't handle the exception properly so user is left without bitcoin while that amount never left site's wallet.

That a lesson to be learn. Check everything before sending bitcoin. Manual enter of address is common to have fault. You can copy the address and paste it to make it easier. Check it if the address you copy paste is right. You cant recover coins you already sent because its irreversible. Be careful next time.

Sorry there's nothing you can do about it, that's the way bitcoin works it can be good or bad (I think it's good). Just remember to be careful next time and you should be good.

There's nothing you can do in my opinion if you sent your bitcoin to the wrong address. You can just track who owns the address that will be hard to do and ask him/her to return the bitcoin you sent. Next time before sending check the address you copy pasted not once not twice but thrice to ensure that you are sending to the write address and to prevent problems like that in the future. Also check that your computer don't have a virus that copies someone's address rather than the btc address your copying and pasting to prevent further wrong sending in the future.

if the address you sent your bitcoins to is known in the internet you can contact the owner and ask them to return it, but in most cases you can't track who owns a certain bitcoin address and contact them so it means a free bitcoins to them (if someone owns that address, its possible too that no one owns the address yet)

Assume that I sent my coins to unknown address that exists and is used by someone.
I realized that and now I want to contact the owner of this address, so you are telling me there is no way to send him/her my message?
I heard that there is a way to store information in the blockchain so I thought some kind of info could be attached to to bitcoin transactions as well.

That really sucks man next time you gotta be more careful

This is the situation that I'm always thinking when sending bitcoins but there is no way to recover the bitcoins that you have sent to the wrong address.

Just take it the lesson that every time you will send, always double check the bitcoins that you are copy-pasting. Bitcoin is not the same as paypal, where you can dispute your transaction.

Yeah in this case there is no way to refund what you send already but you can try to ask the owner of the wrong btc address to send your money back . Just send a little amount of satoshi and add a message to it . Most wallets has this feature so don't worry .

Better learn your lesson from this incident .  Always check the addresses before doing a transaction .

Sorry for your loss but you have learned a lesson you probably never forget.

If a bitcoin transactions could be reversed then everybody would require additional information about your person ( just to be able to hunt you in case you reverse it and service or goods were already provided to you ). That's why any credit card, paypal or similar paying methods needs you to reveal/prove you identity.
Anonymity is great bitcoin feature but at cost of certain risks (you have faced one of them). I guess the only thing we can advise is to be more careful next time.

Bitcoin is not irreversible or cannot altered once you made a transaction then its final.

All you have to do is double check that the address you want to send is right, even triple to fourth you must check it otherwise you have to accept it as a donation to the owner of that address unless the he send it back to you.

Yes, the transaction won't go through and you'll get a message like this.

So, he probably sent to an existing address.


Yes, with coinbase I remember there's a field for "Note" where you can write an optional message.

It seems to be impossible to recover the bitcoin you have sent to other bitcoin address because as far as I know once you have started a transaction with bitcoin it is impossible to cancel the transaction or recover the sent amount .

Always check and double check before sending. It is so easy, check the first few chars and the last few chars, they match then you're good. Better luck next time.

How could you send this person a message, you should know who that person is and I don't see the way to reveal the identity. Even if you find out who that person is it's only his/her good will to give that coins back to you, there is no way that you can force it to do that. Always check the address twice, this is my advice for the next time.

Coins are lost. The probability to find who owns that address is extremely small. There is only one chance if you are really lucky and this is based to recipient's honesty. When see the transaction as he knows that he can't claim money from this wallet return it to sender.

How is he going to find that out? Nobody s going to reveal to him and even if he would be able to find out, there s slim chance he ll get it back.

Yeah that's really impossible unless you know him/her already but as what OP experienced, I don't really think that he can do it. He have only 1 out of 1M chance to do that. Achow101 only said that because that's the only way how sending bitcoin can be return which is really not possible.