Sending USDT to BTC address

[M.isazadeh]

I sent my USDT asset from binance to a BTC exchange address belonges to my friend, now he has no seed wallet to retrieve my asset, please guide me if it's possible  to get it back.
I'm looking forward for your favor.
Best regards.

[pooya87]

to a BTC exchange address

the person controlling the private key of a cryptocurrency address can handle these things and when the controller is an exchange then you'll have to contact that exchange and hope they handle cases like this, usually they don't unless the value of the transaction is high.

[nc50lc]

Which exchange? You should search if they have a "Coin/Token Recovery Service".

If they have, check the minimum recoverable amount and the fee, then contact their support.
If none, you're out of luck.

[M.isazadeh]

That is a domestic exchange site and also a wallet.
I contacted  them but they said it's out of control.😓
If there is another way please help me.
Thank you.

[bob123]

I contacted  them but they said it's out of control.😓
If there is another way please help me.

I think you misunderstood what pooya87 said:

the person controlling the private key of a cryptocurrency address can handle these things [...]

If you are not in control of the private keys, you can do nothing.

You made a mistake by sending an altcoin to an BTC address belonging to an exchange.
If they don't have the time or simply don't want to help you, you are out of luck. They don't have to help you. If they would, that would be because of a goodwill.

[mikeywith]

They don't have to help you. If they would, that would be because of a goodwill.

I believe that is more of an obligation, any decent exchange would help you recover your funds in such situations, but what OP did is a bit complicated and his "domestic" exchange might not have enough knowledge on how to deal with this case.

OP has most likey sent usdt omni layer token which is actually built on Bitcoin ( the reason why binance allowed the trasnaction in the first place), to move those funds the exchange needs to send bitcoin to the same address as later on it will be used as fees to transact the usdt token, i don't know the exact procedure but i believe it is a bit more than simply importing the private keys of a btc address in a usdt wallet, so unless the exchange is willing to cooperate,  those tokens are lost forever.

[DireWolfM14]

I sent my USDT asset from binance to a BTC exchange address belonges to my friend

What do you mean by "BTC exchange address?"  Did you send USDT to an address that starts with "1," "3," or "bc1?"  If I'm not mistaken, Binance has security features that try to prevent making the mistake of sending tokens to incompatible addresses.  Are you sure you sent the USDT to a bitcoin address?

[hosseinimr93]

What do you mean by "BTC exchange address?"  Did you send USDT to an address that starts with "1," "3," or "bc1?"  If I'm not mistaken, Binance has security features that try to prevent making the mistake of sending tokens to incompatible addresses.  Are you sure you sent the USDT to a bitcoin address?

The OP has likely sent USDT in Omni layer which has been built on top of bitcoin blockchain.
USDT addresses in Omni Layer are bitcoin addresses and that's why Binance allowed OP to send tokens to a BTC address.  

Take a look at Omni explorer.
All addresses are bitcoin addresses.

[keychainX]

I sent my USDT asset from binance to a BTC exchange address belonges to my friend, now he has no seed wallet to retrieve my asset, please guide me if it's possible  to get it back.
I'm looking forward for your favor.
Best regards.

You need to contact the support of the exchange and send them the tx number and proof that you own the sending address.

If you are lucky they will return it, but usually they wont bother if the amount is small. Binance does this sometimes, but not if the amount is small (to them small is below 1 BTC)

Coinbase does this sometimes too, but some people have to wait six months for the support to trace it.

Most of the support tickets are answered by bots so you must be persistent and keep sending them mail, otherwise they wont bother.

Good luck!
/KX

[OcTradism]

The OP has likely sent USDT in Omni layer which has been built on top of bitcoin blockchain.
USDT addresses in Omni Layer are bitcoin addresses and that's why Binance allowed OP to send tokens to a BTC address.  

Take a look at Omni explorer.
All addresses are bitcoin addresses.

There are three chains for USDT now: Omni layer that is built on Bitcoin blockchain; ERC20 that is built on Ethereum blockchain, and TRC20 that is built on Tron blockchain.
ERC20 tokens have the address format of Ethereum address, but they are not ETH. More important, the problem of OP is he does not have any control on private key or mnemonic seeds of the address. In crypto "Not your keys, not your bitcoins; not your keys, not your crypto; not your keys, not your funds".

It is not a discrimination between global and domestic exchanges but domestic exchanges tend to be small and their supports probably not good enough. Moreover, big exchanges do not mean that they must or always provide such recovery services for users. If they have such recovery services, the fees often are high. If fees are higher than what people can get back, it is out of luck again.

Here are some very important concepts to learn if you are going to continue to use Bitcoin. Please take a moment to read through this post:

The reason that "blockchain" couldn't help

The company called blockchain that runs a website called blockchain is not THE blockchain.  Imagine if I were to create a company called "Internet Services", and that my company has a website that lists the names of all the internet email providers that I know of.  That doesn't mean that I am in control of THE internet or of any of those company's email services.  If you were to send an email from Google's gmail service over THE internet to someone else's AOL email address, and that email were to fail to arrive...  Calling my company that publishes the list of email service providers isn't going to accomplish much.  I'm not Google (the provider that you sent from). I'm not AOL (the provider that you sent to). I'm not THE internet (the technology that you used to send the email).

That's what happened when you tried to contact "blockchain".  There is a company called "blockchain". They provide a website that lists all the blocks that they know about in THE public blockchain. That does not mean that they are in control of the blockchain, or any of the services that make use of that public blockchain.  When you sent bitcoins from Coinbase through THE blockchain to someone else's service and those bitcoins failed to arrive... Calling the company that publishes the list of known blocks isn't going to accomplish much. They are not Coinbase (the service provider you sent from). They are not the service provider that you sent to. They are not THE blockchain (the technology that you used to send the bitcoins.

It can be confusing that there is both a technology called blockchain and a company called blockchain.  The company did not create the blockchain (they came along later and just named themselves after the existing technology).


The reason Coinbase couldn't help

Coinbase provides you a place to acquire bitcoins, and sends them elsewhere on your behalf.  Bitcoins are not an electronic "account" like you are used to with a bank.  It works more like an electronic representation of a CASH (paper and coins) transaction.  If you pay someone $100 with an electronic account (like a credit card) you can contact the company that provides that account and they can cancel the transaction.  If you hand someone a $100 bill, and they walk away...  The money is gone.  There is nobody to call.  The only person that can give you that $100 back is the person that you gave it to.  When you "sent a transaction from coinbase" what actually happened was that you asked coinbase to give some of the bitcoins that they were holding on your behalf to someone else (more specifically, to a bitcoin address that was not under their control).  Once they turned over those bitcoins, there isn't anything coinbase can do to get them back.  The only person that can give you the money back (or access the money at all) is the person (or company) that controls the address that you sent to.


The reason the receiver is having difficulty getting their service to fix this

Managing control over crypto-currency requires the use of digital keys.  Each address has a key that will allow controlling of any funds at that address. The ONLY way to control those funds is with that key... AND... ANYONE with control of that key (or a copy of that key) can control those funds.  Now imagine you run a service (similar to Coinbase) where you are managing the funds of thousands (or millions) of people on their behalf.  That means your service has thousands (or millions) of keys to keep secure. If a disgruntled employee can get their hands on any of those keys, then they can steal funds from your customers.  Therefore, you need to have extremely strict control over who can access the keys and how they are accessed.  Also, if you were to lose any of those keys, the funds would become permanently inaccessible.  It is possible to copy keys, but it is not possible to re-create a key without a copy of the original. Scammers, thieves, and other criminals will contact the service regularly, pretending to be a customer with an unusual situation and ask them to do something out of the ordinary with the keys in hopes of gaining control of the funds or tricking the service into sending funds.  It is this high level of security and caution with their customer's funds that makes it time consuming and difficult to subvert their normal security processes to acquire a BTC key for a BCH address.  Because of the time, difficulty, and risk... many services will either refuse to help or will require a significant fee to help in a situation like this.

However, the receiver's service is the ONLY entity that CAN fix this

Since the receiver's service is the entity that controls the digital keys of the address that you sent to, and since it is impossible to control funds without that digital key... You are at the mercy of the receiver's service.  If they are unwilling to help you, then you either need to find a way to force them to help, or you need to consider this an expensive lesson in being careful about where you send your crypto-currency.

Bittrex:
https://bittrex.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000961172-Bittrex-s-Deposit-Recovery-Policy

Crosschain Deposit Recovery

Crosschain - A deposit of one coin to a different coins address is considered a crosschain deposit

Bittrex will only attempt to recover crosschain deposits that exceed $5000 at the time of deposit, within 7 days of the deposit and will charge a 0.1 BTC for this recovery. Recovering coins crosschain is an inherently dangerous and time consuming process.

Due to our new Crosschain Recovery System, the minimum requirement for crosschain recoveries is $3000 at the time of deposit for the following crosschain pairs:

    BTC to BCH
    BCH to BTC
    BTC to USDT
    USDT to BTC

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7tb2i9/need_help_lost_10000_binance_usdt_sent_to/
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7rg13t/metoo_sent_usdt_from_binance_to_bitcoin_coinbase/

[Pmalek]

If I'm not mistaken, Binance has security features that try to prevent making the mistake of sending tokens to incompatible addresses. 

That is true, but only if you try to send the ERC-20 or TRC-20 version of Tether to an Omni layer USDT address. That is most probably not what happened here. I am afraid the OP will have to forget about those coins. Even bigger exchanges don't bother recovering most transactions. 

[LoyceV]

I believe that is more of an obligation, any decent exchange would help you recover your funds in such situations

I disagree. I would argue that any decent exchange doesn't have any single employee with direct access to private keys. The risks of losing everyone's funds would be much larger than the risk of losing funds because of transactions sent to the wrong chain.
Kraken explains it better:

"You are absolutely correct about us possessing the private keys in this circumstance. That being said, it isn't as straight forward as you might think. Kraken is a cryptocurrency exchange and the nature of cryptocurrency exchanges are wholly different from the experience you might have with a personal wallet where you have easy access to the private keys. With things like the theft of Mt Gox, the internal compromise of Shapeshift, the social engineering of BitPay, and others, we must put security as the paramount concern. As such, our exchange is setup in such a way that nobody within Kraken can unilaterally move funds. We believe that this is a very important protection that makes it extremely difficult for client funds to be stolen by external or internal parties.

Only a very small group of people at Kraken (devs) have the ability to access your funds given an auditable thorough process of checks and balances. This makes the process extremely resource (time) intensive for the devs that have very full plates and very little time to dedicate to any specific task. They must prioritize all of our tasks internally and the requests of clients as best they can. We think that the prioritization of improving our UI/UX as to avoid these type of mistakes will show the greatest dividends for our clients."

[mikeywith]

That is true, but only if you try to send the ERC-20 or TRC-20 version of Tether to an Omni layer USDT address.

Well, you don't really own a specific version of USDT on Binance, I don't know how Binance deals with the balance internally, but if you have USDT on Binance it means you can spend it on all 3 blockchains, if you have my ERC-20 USDT address, and you send me some USDT tokens, I can then send it to an Omni address or even TRC-20 without converting or exchanging a thing, Binance will only check the structure of the address, if it matches a valid btc legacy address when you send on OMNI layer, it will send it without a question.

I disagree. I would argue that any decent exchange doesn't have any single employee with direct access to private keys.

Of course, it's not like you are going to contact support and they will transfer you to someone who keeps all the private keys on his tablet, the exchange will have their own procedure to access those private keys without exposing all private keys to a single point of failure, they could have a sort of internal multi-sig between a few employees or however they see fit, as a client I don't care how they do it, and I read many stories from exchanges like Binance and Hitbtc, in fact, the former even helped users recover tokens sent to a wrong address of a token that was not even listed on their exchange, Hitbtc would help you recover funds sent to the wrong address at a fixed fee of $100, I am sure a few other well-known exchanges will do that same, this doesn't compromise their security by any means if done correctly, but I agree on the fact that some exchanges might not want to bother with all of this at all.

[hugeblack]

@M.isazadeh How much did you send? If it's huge or you can't afford to lose it, try the following. The chance to get your money back is slim but possible.
The support team's response will be that they can't get that money back and it is your wrong but try to communicate with Binance managers^[1][2], if you can collect enough sympathy you will be able to get your money back.

Here is a similar situation:

"Unfortunately we are unable to recover coins that have been sent to an incorrect address. The support overhead created by doing so is currently unmanageable and this is not something we are able to do. Please be careful in future when depositing coins to ensure they are being sent to the correct coin address. Any questions please get in touch."

Hi depboy, First up, let me apologize and explain what happened in this case. ....  As we know the coins are completely recoverable, and I really don't want to set a precedent for this, but I'll make an exception - I've used our user transfer system to send you 25.57385629 BCH, and changed your recovery request to credit them to me instead. This means that you won't be out of pocket until we can be bothered recovering them, and if we take a month to recover them that becomes a me problem instead of a you problem. Sorry again for the dramas, I hope you enjoy your time on Cryptopia. If you have any questions, queries or feedback feel free to get in touch with us. Cheers, SeriousFace The Cryptopia Team

[1] https://twitter.com/cz_binanccs
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/binance/