A friend asks for USDT and gives an address on Tron. What do you pick when sending?

USDT and exactly the Tron network. The network must match what the receiver named. Any other network risks losing the money.

You have 50 USDC on Base, but the transfer fails: “insufficient funds for gas”. Why?

No ETH on Base, and gas is paid in ETH. Base is an Ethereum L2, so gas there is paid in ETH. A couple of dollars in ETH covers many transfers.

In your wallet history an address looks right: same first and last characters. What do you do?

Get the address from the receiver again and check all of it. This is the “address poisoning” trick. Scammers only need a few characters to match.

Your first transfer: address, network, gas

Lesson 9 of 58 in the course “Crypto”. Free, with animations and a quiz.

The address: where to send

An address is the public number of your wallet. You can safely share it, like a card number for a transfer. It looks different on different blockchains. Bitcoin addresses start with bc1, 1 or 3. Ethereum ones start with 0x and have 42 characters. Good news: the same 0x address works on every EVM network, meaning networks compatible with Ethereum, such as Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain and Polygon. The address is not a secret; the seed phrase is.

The network matters more than the coin

The same coin lives on different networks. USDT, for example, exists on Ethereum, Tron, Solana, BNB Chain and more. When you send it, what matters is not only “what” but also “on which network”. If you send on Tron while the receiver expects Ethereum, the money will not land where they are waiting for it. Sometimes an exchange can recover it for a fee, sometimes not at all. Rule: the receiver names the coin and the network, and you pick exactly those.

Gas: the fee to write

Gas is the network fee for writing your transfer into a block. You pay it in the network’s native coin: ETH on Ethereum and most of its L2s, SOL on Solana, TRX on Tron, BNB on BNB Chain. A classic beginner trap: 100 USDT on Ethereum, zero ETH, and nothing can be sent. Keep a little of the native coin on every network where you hold money. Gas prices float: when the network is busy, they go up.

The test transfer

Pros do it this way: a small amount first, then the rest. After you send, the transfer has a hash (tx hash), its unique number. Paste it into a block explorer: Etherscan for Ethereum, Solscan for Solana, Tronscan for Tron. Status Success means the transfer is in a block. Pending means it is still waiting. Receiver confirms they see the money? Now send the main amount. One extra fee for the test is cheaper than lost money.

Trap: the poisoned address

Scammers create an address whose start and end match one you recently sent money to, then send you a tiny transfer from it. It lands in your history. Next time, you copy the address from history, check only the first and last characters and send the money to the scammer. In May 2024 someone lost 1,155 WBTC, about $68 million, this way. That case ended with the funds returned; people are rarely that lucky. Copy addresses only from a trusted source and check the whole thing.

Check yourself

A friend asks for USDT and gives an address on Tron. What do you pick when sending?
Correct answer: USDT and exactly the Tron network. The network must match what the receiver named. Any other network risks losing the money.
You have 50 USDC on Base, but the transfer fails: “insufficient funds for gas”. Why?
Correct answer: No ETH on Base, and gas is paid in ETH. Base is an Ethereum L2, so gas there is paid in ETH. A couple of dollars in ETH covers many transfers.
In your wallet history an address looks right: same first and last characters. What do you do?
Correct answer: Get the address from the receiver again and check all of it. This is the “address poisoning” trick. Scammers only need a few characters to match.

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