Bitcoin Forum

There are moments we have regular benefactors and those we may have business transactions on a regular basis with who facilitates on executing transactions without informing the other party first and take them unaware while sends the funds probably could be a usual and successful.

But while the receiver was not informed before the sender sends the funds, there are times we ends up sending the funds into one of those abandoned accounts due to insecurity activities in the Wallet address or those inaccessible Wallet addresses due to lost of seed phrases where the funds there are forever be unclaimed due to inaccessibility of the account.
So there is always a need to request for the recipient (s) to either send you their wallet address or ask to confirm if you can send to the usual address you may have transacted with the person.
This is to avoid getting your funds stuck and we know in the Crypto network especially in the non custodian wallet providers once you have lost you seed phrase and lost access to your wallet, you have lost it all forever.

This happened between an uncle and I during my school days who sent money in my dormant back account.
I am motivated to say this today after a friends cousin recently sent him Bitcoin worth of $6K from abroad and hoped was going to be an exciting surprise to him but as it is, the money has become a waste because the guy has already trashed and forgotten that wallet address the fund was sent to.
The recipient should be blamed too because benefactors or regular
business partners are ought to be notified in cases like that because funds can be sent without your notice at anytime.

How necessary do you find this post?

To be honest, not really necessary, but it's informative and a good thing to always make the community aware of such case scenario. Most times we as humans tends to make mistakes that cannot be reversed, especially with cryptocurrency where if you loss access to your funds or send to a wrong address, your coins are literally lost for good.

Before every transaction, be it business or even your personal transaction, it's better to confirm the address of the receiver. That's because many times these tiny things that we deem not important might just be the most important at that point in time. It doesn't matter if you are doing a surprise or not, you have to confirm the receivers address always before broadcasting your transaction...

I don't know why someone would send crypto without requesting for a wallet address, even if you have sent funds severally to the same address. It could be that they have been receiving the funds in a third party service and their account has been closed on that service or their non-custodial wallet might even have been compromised, etc, it only takes a second to request an address.

It is even wrong to funds to your own centralized exchange account, without getting the wallet address from the platform itself, some people save it in other places and just copy and send, but we've seen many times were exchanges change their customers address, and you then have to contact support for help.

It's a unique story indeed, but who's to blame? It's hard to say, on the other hand, it was a supposedly a big surprised, so the party is not going to ask whether if the address is still in control or he have trashed it already.  But I guess this is another one of those extreme cases that we need to remember and be a lessons for everyone that maybe we shouldn't surprise someone with this kind of thinking. As we have said here, we shouldn't trust but verify. So at least your uncle though could have verified it address. Just a subtle question to not necessarily aroused the suspicion of the other party that he might send something. Or just try a small amount first and see how it goes if it is going to be received or not.

Good advice.

But if I want to send bitcoin to someone again, I will request for the person's bitcoin address again because I know exactly what you are saying and I know how dangerous it is as it can lead to loss of coins.

If sent to a noncustodial wallet and the person does not have the seed phrase anymore, the coin is not stuck but lost forever.

Deep inside their conscience, they can not blame each other rather they are both blaming themselves.

The sender feels it is his fault not to had confirmed if the wallet address is still actively in use before he proceeded while the receiver feels it is his fault not to had let his cousin know that he had got a different wallet after giving a remark that his cousin has usually been taking him unaware sending him funds on Bitcoin through the same wallet he had trashed.
The scenario just ruined the whole good times for the both.


Verification is very necessary and not just to assume when it get to do with funds. Especially in the unrevisable cases like the inaccessibility of wallet addresses in the decentralized technology.

Mine was an ease because I had the opportunity to restore that my domant bank account and regained access since it was Centralized banking system.
But even giving a dime to try if it would go successful can still be risky because a gone$1 is gone and unrecoverable. The best is to confirm and get it all done rightfully once and for all.

It just feels ruined because the expectation of the surprises may turn regrettable.

Some folks are just lazy , they prefer to save the same wallet address is some where they can easily access it saving themselves the stress of always going or telling the folks for address before sending the coins . While some are usually too eager to send their coin to the other party maybe in form of suprise or ignorance.

---

A friend of mine experience same thing so I had to learn from his mistakes , he had his exchange Wallet save in his WhatsApp Messenger for easy access, unknowing to him that sometimes exchanges do change their customers address , so he sent some coin to that same address just as he always do , and the coin did not arrive in his wallet . So after some further investigation he found out that the address ge sent the coin to is different from the in the exchange. After hearing all that I had to double the act of been cautious whenever am making any transaction.

I guess we can't blame those people other side want to send the funds because they want to give a surprise which is unfortunately the other side throw already their wallet well yes there's a regret right there. After all, still its a money but this just to be charge to experience for them and to others who knows their story. The reason I often double-check and ask the other parties before I commit to a transaction is to avoid this from happening also if you are doing trades such as p2p if you are the seller who will make a transact first at the first places its your accoutability.

In this regard, we may not be able to compare the fiat transaction policies tot hat of the bitcoin network in cryptocurrency, because bitcoin transactions are not reversible, while in traditional fiat, they are, another thing we should clear about what others may have regarding the mentality of bitcoin transactions on a wrong address or network being lost is this, they are not lost, but instead redistributed as spreads to the holding capacities each everyone of us were having and this is part of what constitute determining the market price.

Since it is cryptocurrency, I think the sender should be blamed ti sending to an address he doesn’t know if it is still active or not, while if it is a bank account to receive fiat currency, that will not be a problem because the account name will show before they send money.

What if his uncle is using an exchange wallet address that might have been changed by the exchange owners when they undergo maintenance?

And knowing fully well that crypto transactions are irreversible, I think even if it should be a surprise, he should have try to reach his uncle for address and bit to disclose the amount he is sending, it would have been better than wasting the entire money.

I am going to blame the sender of the asset, knowing how delicate crypto transactions are, we should always verify if the wallet we are sending to is the right one and the receiver still have access to it. Surprise or not the receiver is still going to feel that level of joy and gratitude if the money got to him safely. The money will serve the same purpose wether it came as a surprise or not. To me safety of funds should be prioritised over surprises. Now the asset is lost and none achieved their objective, over something that could have been avoided. There's justifiable reason to blame the receiver.

I've never heard about such, but I know there are many stupid people. So I'm sure your post is not the first; it's very likely this has happened before. The sender must be a newbie for making such a costly mistake. He was supposed to inform the receiver before sending the funds, even if he had been using it frequently. The receiver might still have access to the wallet but would lie about it because of his stupidity. This really sucks.

I don't see the need for it. Anyone who starts with the basics of crypto will always learn about the seed phrases that the wallet owner has. It's normal to think about any gift, but you should understand how simple the process of creating a wallet is and how easy it is to lose the seed phrase from it. Therefore, it is always necessary to clarify with the wallet owner the current and valid wallet. I don't blame the recipient for not announcing every time he changes his wallet number. If the funds are lost, then this is only the carelessness of the sender.

Before sending your bitcoin to any receiver, make sure you ask the receiver and get a confirmation on that past used address is still accessible and usable. If you do oppositely, sending without asking for a confirmation on a receiving address of a receiver, you have chances of sending bitcoin to a loss wallet.

It is reason why Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin founder, advised that Bitcoin users should never delete their Bitcoin wallets.

This is a very important information for Bitcoin sender's that sends coins to s receiver's wallet without informing the receiver, it might be that the person had abandoned the wallet due to one reason or another, especially when they have lost the device where the wallet was created and also lost the seed phrase. There is nothing that the sender and receiver can do about it if it's a none custodial wallet. No need to surprise anybody by sending Bitcoin into their none custodial wallet without informing them, I know that people abandon wallets all the time because it is very easy to create another one instantly. I believe that many people are living in regrets because they didn't follow this this simple tip of not informing a receiver before sending.

And since things like this are happening, it will be best if they try to ask before just sending or transferring funds to a wallet that is no longer in use, so there are enough things that we might no longer have power over, especially when it is executed, so inquiries do not take anything out. it might even be that the user is no longer using the wallet due to maybe misplaced details about the wallet and when it comes to this case what will be the way out especially when you are owing the person things like this is going to bring a lot of misunderstanding between the two parties so there should be some kind of communication first.

Once you have sent it it you can no longer reverse that transaction, so the best thing is to be that before you send it, ask whether it has been a customer or not. Informing the person will be the best option that can be explored to protect yourself from all this kind of contradiction.

Preferable advise for newbies who are yet to make any transactional mistakes, users who has been into Bitcoin for a while always propel safety when sending or receiving Bitcoin. Many have several Bitcoin address and should decide which they want to receive from. For those with loan service in Bitcoin, at the date of lending always tell which address they want the funds returned into, just like recently when Shas.. changed his address, address was forwarded to everyone through PM, if you send Bitcoin without consulting the receiver you will have to repay the cost of lost coin.

It's safer to always ask for fresh wallet from benefactors before sending coins to them, ask and confirm if their wallet that you have is still active before sending coins to it. There was a wallet my friend showed me long time ago, there are different valuable coins in that wallet, even thousands of USDT are contained in that wallet but according to what my friend told me, no body has access to the wallet as the real owner has lost the private key and yet once in a while people mistakenly send coins to the wallet, and I guess people that keep on sending coins to the wallet still thinks that the own is using the wallet.
OP, this post is very necessary and serves as a reminder for most of us here. Thanks for sharing.

Yep - I once made a mistake like this where the intention was to give a surprise to a friend who was having a birthday and then sent some coins worth $ 20, but he realized that the wallet had lost its seed phrase because I knew he used that wallet so it was sent there to send coins.

After 1 week - I asked him if you had sold the coins that were given? Then he asked which wallet did you send it to if the previous one was no longer used because its seed phrase was lost, so there I admitted my mistake why I didn't confirm first before making the transaction. :'(

What you explained in the Op is something that happened to me during Q1 of this year, where I sent crypto of 90USDT to the wrong address because I didn't notify or ask the recipient where to send the funds.

The crypto is not lost forever, even in a situation where the wallet's private information is lost. Because in the future, when the quantum computer that can break the entropy used in creating crypto wallets is developed, all the crypto sent to inaccessible crypto wallets will be recovered.

Actually many people underrate the significance of communication as regards to sending and receiving crypto. In the case of something going wrong they have no opportunity of recovery unlike the case with traditional banks. It goes and once it gets into the hands of the wrong or the inactive wallet, it is gone. I heard a bad story of such too, whereby someone lost access simply because they changed phones, or did not back up their seed phrase. It is actually a lesson that we need to consider crypto as seriously as cash or even more. A popup of confirmation might save thousands of dollars that would go to waste.

In my opinion, this should be a common practise to make the recipient aware that you might be sending him funds to XYZ account. In my case, I never use old destination address or account numbers that I sent funds to previously. Whenever I am sending anything (both fiat or crypto), I always ask the recipient for the acc no, or the recieving address. I do have these address saved from the previous transactions but despite having that I'm always asking anyway. You never know whether they changed/closed/lost their accounts or not...

We can associate this behaviour with the copy/paste old address, which can often end in a loss if there's malware, a clipboard hijacker, or a peculiar situation like these that the user had access to this, but not anymore. We should not assume anything because things keep changing so it's better to find the right ways if we want to gift somone BTC. Instead of sending them to their old address, we can create a wallet by ourselves or simply load it in a HW then give it to them so there won't be a loss and it encourages better practices to handle crypto funds. Being our own bank comes with more responsibilities.

This can be overlooked if you send fiat to a bank account because, even if the account is dormant, the benefactor can reach out to his bank to get access to the money. However, if it is Bitcoin and it happens at an address that one is no longer using, maybe due to the loss of the seed phrase, the asset is gone forever. In a non-custodial wallet, when the seed phrase is nowhere to be found, there is nothing that can be done about the asset. It is very important to always reach out to the person to whom you want to send funds because, in cryptocurrency, it is common for people to create a new address for different reasons.

As for me, I don't just send funds to someone's address simply because my counterpart and I have done some transactions; I always ask for the address to avoid mistakes on my end.

I think this incident is important to be a lesson, that every time we want to make a transaction, especially a Bitcoin transaction like the one you mentioned, then we should make sure whether the recipient's address can still be accessed or not, because this is really risky to lose a fund, especially if it is a large amount.

Regarding the incident, I think this is a mistake from both parties, and more precisely this is a misunderstanding, which should have been confirmed by both parties before the transaction was carried out. In addition, we can also learn that we should not take the ownership of the address we have lightly, we must keep it as well as possible, because it could be that in the future we will still need it like the incident that op mentioned.

Both parties are to blame here. They are both responsible for the loss of those coins.

The sender (the uncle) should have asked for an address before sending to ensure the recipient has control over it and owns its private key. It’s also recommended to use a new address for each transaction and avoid address reuse for pivacy reasons.

The recipient (the nephew) is also to blame because he should have kept a backup of his wallet even if he was not going to use it anymore. Here is what Satoshi said about this:

Invariably the receiver of this lost ought to be surprised gifted Bitcoin should had let his cousin know that he is no more using the previous wallet address. So there should had been a need to update his cousin with the changes.
If not for any reason but because that relative staying abroad has been sending him money on surprise in regular basis with same wallet address.
So he would had just alerted him.

Although like @lovesmayfamilis said earlier, anyone with the basic knowledge about the risk of loosing funds and loosing of private security keys of wallets are meant to consult receiver before sending it.
Perhaps we can not consider excitement of surprises than risks were we can not recover the lost values when it occurs.

This is informative for crypto newbies, but not for old timers, especially those who work in the service sector where every transaction requires address confirmation before delivery is made. If I had to make a scale from 1 - 10, I would rate this post with 3/10.

Apparently the sender forgot to ask if the wallet that he will send fund is still intact and used by the receiver? Its only natural to ask first if he still got access to the wallet or if he still uses it. Otherwise why would you continue to send it not knowing the answer to those question.

For me the one at fault here is the sender. But honestly the story wasnt complete of details regarding the transaction happened. The point is always verify first before doing any transaction.

It is as important as verifying the destination address before you make a transaction. Something we often encounter is mistakes made by someone who is used to copying from previous transaction history.
We must verify whether our destination address is still active or no longer used. For Bitcoin transactions that allow each person to have several active addresses. This must be ensured first. If the transaction is related to business, then there should be a discussion first from both parties to confirm the transaction.

I treat crypto transactions differently compared to how I treat banking transactions. I know when I go into business with someone, they might just have a specific bank account which could either be attached to their name or that of their business name, which I can easily send them money in case of an emergency without even reconfirming the account. No matter what, they can always get access to the account; that's what makes banks centralised.

But in terms of crypto, even if I am to send payment to the person more than once in a week, as long as they don't state that this is a permanent address, I will always ask for permission before I send because any loss incurred by such a mistake can easily be on my head.

Another reason you should never discard you seed or private keys even if you don’t use them/see a need for it again.. you never can predict if/when the need for it could arise. I get it that it’s essential for each party to come into agreement about which address to use for carrying out the business transaction(very essential) but still, you never know where the mistake could come from with you needing the access to wallet you thought you never need in the first place.

Very necessary.

As senders, we have to verify first the addresses that we'll be sending our funds. Because if we're not going to do it, it's likely that an address that's kept in our records are no longer in use.

We don't know if the receivers like to delete records of theirs that includes wallets but I don't think it with the exchanges. Just verify and always do it, it will always save us from too much trouble.

It will not take a lot of time to ask first if the address is still in use or possession of the receiver although it's never gone to them as long as they have access to it.

It can be used to prove ownership or identity by signing a Bitcoin message from private key of your known and used address, but it is not the only case to think of.

Someone can send you bitcoin to your past addresses that you no longer plan to use it in future, however it does not cost you anything to keep storage and backup of your past wallets and addresses.

Someone can send you bitcoin without asking you, and it can be a fortune. It raises another concern, that if it is a mistaken sending, will you keep it or return it to the sender in such case, it depends on you.

If you are the owner of that address and you own its private key then no body can claim it’s theirs. That’s the beauty of cryptos. Your keys your funds.

As I'v said before, you should not delete any of your wallets. It’s unlikely to happen but if you receive coins that do not belong to you then you should send them back to the sender.

Cases like this are very common, so it is very necessary to build communication between the sender and recipient so that assets are not frozen in a wallet that cannot be accessed. In my opinion, this information is general and should not be ignored, at least what is told in the topic is used as an experience for each individual to be more careful when sending crypto assets, especially if you want to make a surprise without first confirming with the recipient. Neither party is to blame for the incident as the error occurred due to miscommunication between the two parties.

Sending funds to someone else's wallet without his notice is not good especially, when the person is not aware that you want to send the funds. Because if he's aware, he will definitely give you his bitcoin wallet receiving address which he can access immediately. Sending funds from bank account to someone without his notice is also bad because I have mistakenly send funds to my friend's account that he doesn't have access to anymore.

It's good that receiver and the sender communicates few minutes before the funds is sent into his bitcoin wallet so that there wouldn't be any mistake that will lead to lost funds.

The need is not like access the bitcoin fund immediately after you sent it to that address, but to make sure it is actually accessible.

Sending bitcoin to a receiving address without asking and getting confirmation from the receiver that he is still able to access that wallet and address is insane. In a bad situation, if the receiver already lost access to that wallet, your sent transaction will not come to the receiver as it should be, and the deal would be considered as not completed yet. This also means you will have to make your payment to the receiver twice, as it's your fault, not the receiver's mistake and responsibility.

That was the problem, the person who sent the coin treated the transaction like a bank transaction. Normally, you could send money through someone's bank account, and the funds can be withdrawn even if the account is dormant or restricted. In some cases, it could be recovered if it was sent to the wrong account since every account holder is known by the bank.

In crypto transactions , such privileges do not exist. A single mistake could make you lose money. Crypto transactions are pseudonymous and in some cases anonymous if privacy tools are used. So there is a need to always cross-check and confirm an address before sending coins.

I started the story as the Op and would be glad to hear from you.
What further storyline is missing based on your input that the story is incomplete?

This is just an informative story that it is risky or probably to say that it is not of good practice if have to send Bitcoin or any crypto currency to anyone without consulting the receiver of their active wallet address since funds in inaccessible wallets will remain lost forever due to unrecoverable misplaced seed phrases.
And of course the sender in the content of the story has made the mistake which I would assume it as an act of ignorant or was not informed of the risks behind before intending to take the cousin on the surprise.

I am really sorry to see what you wrote, that shows you did not understand about bank system and Bitcoin. Let's look at details.

• With bank system, if your ban account is dormant but you still have access to it, you can withdraw your money. There is chance of bank will terminate your bank account if it was inactive for too long time. In another case, if your bank account was restricted, I am quite sure that you can not withdraw your money from it until a day your appeal was approved by that bank and your bank account was recovered to normal status.
• With Bitcoin, if you have private key, you can access your bitcoin. Surely you as a sender must ask the receiver that whether he still has access to that wallet. Interestingly, with Bitcoin non custodial wallets, you can let them inactive any time you want and nobody can terminate your wallets.

The requirements of KYCs in the bank sector and every other centralized platforms that facilitates on transactions is the testament that inactive/domant accounts or lost of access due to lost of personal keys or informations can be retrievable and not limited to the centralized crypto exchange platforms.
So even when funds are sent in such account the beneficiaries can still awake the account by following operatives guidelines but not applicable to decentralized platforms.

So haven to say @Die_empty was right,  I will back it up with my experience as I quote.And that mistake was amicably handled and rectified due to the fact it was a Centralized banking system. So the fund did not go forever like that of my friend and his cousin with their transactions using the non custodial platform.

So when a bank restricts users from access account due to dormancy or inactive, it can still be revalidated but when account has been restricted due to illegal activities such as scam, then there is no accessibility to the account but that is not the case here but the lost of the user seed phrase to have access to the wallet again regarding it is a non custodian platform.

That part where the sender forget to informed or even question the receiver if either the wallets still good or not. Prolly they miss the communication on this cause if the sender asked this on the first place, he could avoid sending it knowing this fact but he didnt means something wasnt talk about during the transaction.

Your post is incredibly important because it highlights key difference with cryptocurrency. You can not get your money back once it has sent. Unlike regular bank transfers if you send crypto to wrong or lost wallet address that money is gone forever as your friend painful story shows.

This means it is very important for senders to always confirm wallet address before sending any funds even if you have sent to them before. It also helps if receiver confirms they are ready to get money. This small step turns simple courtesy into vital safeguard against losing your digital assets.

it is not a must that i should tell everyone i am transacting with that i no longer use a particular address. if i fail to do that and you make the mistake of sending fund to my address that i longer use, i will hold you responsible because you ought to first off make such enquiry before sending such fund especially if it has been long we transacted business together..

for the centralized banking system, you could afford to take such risk because it is possible to recover such money or likely, the money could be reversed but in a decentralized system like bitcoin, the only solution out is that you inform whoever you are transacting with before hand to avoid stories that touches the heart. this is even too basic for every one that has been using the digital space to know that before sending fund to any wallet, the receiver should forward the address to you at that spot you want to send the fund.

we all know that as little as a single number or alphabet missing or used in the wrong place in that address can lead to the fund not getting to the intended sender, this tells that ought most caution is expected to be taken when carrying out any form of crypto related transaction.

In the beginners section, this post will probably be useful.

For more experienced users, this is unlikely to be new, because anyone who has experience handling money (usually electronic) knows about the need to make sure that the recipient's data is filled in correctly. To which, can also add clarification from the recipient about whether he has access to his electronic account (or bitcoin wallet). That is, verification that the recipient will definitely receive the sent funds.

In general, the entire post above again comes down to the old truism "not your keys - not your money". In the context of the discussion in this topic, it takes on a slightly modified formulation "your recipient doesn't have access to the wallet - you will make a donation / burn your money" (It may not sound eloquent, but it can be extremely life-like).

If the statement is not necessarily for you doesn't mean it's not necessary for others. I would have love to go deep in my explanation but perhaps I see that you have already said it all by yourself, what an ironic statement. This topic is very informative not only to newbies but even to some old member here. Sometimes we do things without confirmation just because of over familiarity and it may leed to some problem. I could remember some weeks ago that shasan sent me pm to pay his loan into a new wallet, instead of the formal/usual one I normally send USDT to, simply because something happened Maybe the wallet have an issue. So if he did told me earlier and I send the USDT to it I would have sent that money into an inaccessible wallet or so. So sometimes we need to ask questions even if we are familiar with where we regularly send money to. I have sent money to a friend to an inaccessible account due to not asking questions. So we really need to be careful when sending fund. Always ask the recieve to know if the wallet/account is good to go to avoid loses.

First if the sender sent the coins at a wrong timing, the loses will be on him, wrong time is such a way that he was meant to make payment last week, he sender defaulted and after two weeks now sent coins to the address given previously without notifying the receiver   to either get a new wallet eor continue with the old one.

But is something that need to be handle at that point and he need to know that he have burned his coins since there is no access to tje wallet the sender sent those coins to., unless someone is a newbie that willl make that mistakes since experience users knows that before each new transaction, a new wallet is mostly preferred.

You don't have to quote me to give your shit speech ::) my opinion has nothing to do with yours.. I simply said it wasn't necessary because he asked if it was..

I don’t know about promise444c5 but imo depends on the reason it was sent.I expect such person to initiate another transaction utilizing script like nulldata script (OP_RETURN) stating whatever was the reason for sending such fortune to my address(either it’s a mistake or not).
I know someone might ask what if the person doesn’t know how? The thing is losing such fortune will force you to find a alternative toward reaching out to such address,without an attempt.it could have a lot of meaning to the receiver
Everyone is not above mistake, sometimes mistakes are bound to happen even to the experience users just that the possibility is low compared to a non experience users

This is the most idiotic thing I have heard when it comes to crypto. Why would anyone send bitcoint to other person without confirming the address?
Even if he wanted to give a surprise to his friend, he still had the option to create a new wallet and then share the private key of the wallet to his friend.
This way, they wouldn't have lost the funds to a dormant wallet. This is just stupidity and carelessness.

Even if the person sending is planing on making a surprise, it's his duty to cross check the address before sending any coin to that address. I sometimes cross check new addresses multiple times before proceeding to send any coin into that portfolio. The risk of losing everything sent should create a respected reminder in our heads so we can be conscious of what we are doing. But sometimes for some careless persons it good they have at least  a one time experience of not being watchful and careful when sending crypto so they can learn not to make such mistakes ever again, but as wise people it best to make adjustments so we don't get our own taste of this bitter experience.

The message the story wanted to convey is very necessary but the long intro is not.  I am somehow confused and find the story strange because the sender did not ask the person who was receiving his BTC address when the sender was giving a big amount of money.

As far as I know, people who are sending funds always verify the account or address they are sending to regardless of whether they have already sent a previous transaction to that account.  I believe it was an SOP of any transaction.

It is true that a fund sent to an inaccessible Bitcoin address is forever lost.  So it is advised that we should always confirm the BTC address from the receiver.  And once it was confirmed then that would be the time we can execute the transaction.

Honestly, I think that when we change our receiving account without informing our business partners or employers about it, it puts ones probability of earning meaningful income at the barest minimum. It is always important to check the availability of our accounts before allowing money to be sent there. In the case where it is supposed to be a surprise, i guess the moral lesson is to ensure that we do whatever is necessary to maintain our accounts and fulfil any requirements that may hinder our further use of the account for receiving funds.
One should also endeavor to refuse using  real details to create a bank receiving account for fraudulent activities because this is how many get stuck and have jumbled account receiving information and find themselves in such a spot as told in this narrative post.

You are lucky if your old wallet can't be accessed. In that case, it's like a donation to the network, to the benefit of everyone, and all values rise. You can keep all the old wallet seeds to avoid this.

What's worse is that some wallets have been compromised, so funds will go to a sweeper bot. Once the seed phrase or private key is exposed, it is exposed forever, and whatever robot hacker is the first to sweep it gets all the funds there. There's no chance that's going to be the intended recipient.

In addition to checking the address is still right, it's a good idea to send a small test transaction first if you are sending a large amount. While the concept of a surprise payment to an old wallet address is nice and thoughtful, you may be the one who faces the surprise.

I still keep all the seed phrases from wallets that I haven't used for a long time. And I do not exclude the possibility that some kind of airdrop will be distributed to some of these wallets, unexpectedly for me)