So you’ve sent your funds to the wrong network? The good news is in most cases they can be recovered. Your first step is to take a deep breath and then determine which of the scenarios below happened.
Sent to the wrong address at an Exchange
In this case the exchange should be able to help you. If you’ve sent your ETC to your ETH deposit address, or your ETH to your ETC deposit address then the exchange will be able to refund it.
What you need to do here is reach out to the exchange and ask them nicely to refund your ETC/ETH or credit it to your account.
In most cases this will take some time as it’s a special request and they may need to take a manual approach to resolving the issue. Just understand and be patient as it’s all you can do.
No one on the forums will be able to refund your ETC/ETH. The network is not designed like that and we’re unable to take any steps on our end to resolve.
Sent my ETC to my ETH address (an address I control); or the opposite, my ETH to an ETC address
Excellent! You can get your funds back. In fact they’ve never actually gone missing and you’ve had control of your ETC all along.
First, a lesson, your ETC/ETH addresses are entirely interchangeable, if you control address 0x8c2E4bAf8b50Ad99413E2d76b30c05675Ec3B2B4 on the ETC network you control the same address on ETH network, and vice-versa.
What you’ll want to do is the following:
- Go to https://mycrypto.com/ or https://www.myetherwallet.com/
- If you’re trying to get your ETC then select ETC in the top right; if ETH select ETH
- Now click on “Send Ether & Tokens”
- Now you’ll access your wallet however you normally do:
- If it’s a private key unlock it as normal
- If it’s a hardware wallet then you’ll want to click “Unlock” and select the appropriate “derivation path” as pictured below. If you sent to an ETC address then select the ETC derivation path; if you sent to an ETH address then select the ETH one.
- Now you can send your ETC/ETH to the “correct” address that you wanted to send it to.
Sent my ETC to the wrong address. I do not control the address, I do not know who owns the address, and it is not an exchange.
Unfortunately in this case there is nothing that can be done, one of the advantages of Cryptocurrencies is that if you own an address you’re the only one who can access it. This is a double edged sword in that if funds go to an address that no one owns then no one can get it back because no one controls it.