How to send and receive crypto.

Sending crypto feels like a bank transfer. You enter an address in place of an account number, type an amount and press confirm.

Two things are different. Nobody can pull a payment back once it goes through, and the same coin can travel on more than one network. Each step below exists because of those two facts.

How to receive crypto

1. Open your crypto wallet and tap Receive.
2. Choose the coin, then the network if the wallet asks.
3. Copy the address, or show its QR code to the sender.
4. Tell the sender which network to use.

Receiving needs no signature and no fee from you. An address only lets people pay you, so you can share it freely. Some wallets show a fresh address each time, and the old ones keep working.

Withdrawing from an exchange to your wallet works the same way from the other side. You paste your wallet's address into the exchange's withdrawal page and pick the network.

Why the network must match

USDT, a stablecoin, exists on several blockchain networks, including Ethereum and Tron. A balance on one network is invisible on another.

Sender and receiver must choose the same network. If they do not, the coins land somewhere the receiving wallet or exchange does not look.

Depending on the two networks, mismatched coins may be recoverable with technical help, recoverable only by the exchange for a fee, or lost. Matching the network on both screens avoids the question.

Some exchanges also need a memo or tag, an extra code that tells them which customer a deposit belongs to. If the deposit page shows one, copy it along with the address.

Without the memo, the coins reach the exchange but not your account, and you depend on its support team to credit them.

How to send crypto step by step

1. Get the address from the recipient's Receive screen or deposit page, with the network and any memo.
2. In your wallet, tap Send and choose the coin and network.
3. Paste the address, and never type it by hand.
4. Compare the whole address with the source, including the middle characters.
5. Enter the amount and review the fee.
6. Confirm and sign. On a hardware wallet, check the address on the device screen.

Your wallet then broadcasts the transaction. It waits in the mempool, the queue of unconfirmed transactions, until a miner or validator puts it in a block.

Getting into a block counts as one confirmation, and each block added after it counts as one more. Exchanges credit a deposit after a set number of confirmations, which differs by network and by exchange.

Network fees and timing

The fee pays the network to include your transaction. It depends on how much space or computing work the transaction needs and how busy the network is.

Sending 0.01 BTC or 10 BTC in the same simple transaction costs the same fee. Two illustrations with round numbers follow.

On Bitcoin, a simple payment takes about 140 virtual bytes (vB). At 20 satoshis per vB, the fee is 140 × 20 = 2,800 satoshis. A bitcoin has 100,000,000 satoshis, so that is 0.000028 BTC.

On Ethereum, a plain ether transfer uses 21,000 units of gas. At a gas price of 10 gwei, the fee is 21,000 × 10 = 210,000 gwei. One ether is 1,000,000,000 gwei, so that is 0.00021 ETH.

Sending a token such as USDT uses more gas than a plain ether transfer. The fee is normally paid in the network's own coin, so keep a little ether in the wallet to move tokens on Ethereum.

Real fee rates change with demand, sometimes minute to minute. When a network is busy, rates rise, and paying a higher rate usually gets you into a block sooner.

Bitcoin adds a block about every 10 minutes on average, while Ethereum adds one within seconds, so a transfer can take seconds or more than an hour.

Mistakes you cannot undo

A confirmed transfer is final. The lesson on how a Bitcoin transaction works follows a payment from wallet to block. Watch for these mistakes:

• a wrong network, or a missing memo on an exchange deposit
• an address copied from your own history that a scammer planted there
• malware that swaps the address on your clipboard for the attacker's after you copy it
• a QR code or address from someone you have not verified, such as a stranger claiming to be support

The second trick is address poisoning. A scammer sends a tiny or zero-value transfer to you from an address that starts and ends with the same characters as one you use. Later, you copy from your history and pick theirs.

Checking the whole address beats both poisoning and clipboard malware. The lesson on common crypto scams covers more of these tricks.

A test transaction catches a wrong address or network before it costs you the full amount. Here it is with round, illustrative numbers:

1. You need to send $1,000 of USDT to a new address.
2. You first send $20 and ask the recipient to confirm it arrived.
3. You then send the remaining $980, so $20 + $980 = $1,000 in total.
4. With a $1 network fee each time, you pay $1 + $1 = $2 in fees, one dollar more than a single transfer.