Guide 10 - When something goes wrong

Goal

This guide is for the bad day. By the end you will know, for each common emergency, what is still possible, what is not, and what to do in the first hour. Read it before you need it, because panic is when people make the second mistake.

Three rules apply to every case below:

1. Stop and do not send anything else. A second transaction "to fix it" usually makes recovery harder.
2. Nobody legitimate will ever ask for your seed phrase. Not support, not a "recovery agent", not a video call. Ledger states that it will never ask for the 24 words. ^[14]
3. Write down the facts: transaction ids (TxID), addresses, amounts, dates and times, screenshots. Every support team below asks for them.

Honest limit: a blockchain transaction cannot be undone by anyone, including the exchange that received it. Some cases are recoverable only because a company chooses to help, and the companies say openly that this is not guaranteed.

Time needed

• Reading: 10 minutes.
• First response to any emergency: 10-30 minutes of triage, mostly gathering facts and securing accounts.
• Exchange recovery requests: the time "varies depending on the complexity of the issue", per Kraken. ^[1] Bybit says that once its department has reviewed a missing-tag appeal you get an automated email within 1-3 working days. ^[3] Treat these as examples, not promises.
• Fraud reports and legal routes: days to months.

Before you start

Prepare these now, while nothing is wrong:

• A recovery card for yourself: where the seed backup is kept, which wallet model you use, and whether you set a passphrase. A forgotten passphrase cannot be recovered: Trezor says a typo opens a different, empty wallet. ^[10]
• Support links bookmarked from the official sites, not from search ads or messages. The ones used in this guide are listed under "Official help articles".
• A test-transaction habit (guides 6 and 8). It prevents most of the cases in this guide.
• Your tax and transaction records (guide 9), which also help in a dispute.

Steps

Case 1 - Your hardware wallet is lost, broken or stolen

The device is only a vault door; the seed phrase is the vault. If you still hold the backup, you can restore on a new device or a compatible wallet.

• Trezor: choose "Recover wallet" during setup and enter the words on the device itself. Trezor's instruction is "Do not enter your wallet backups anywhere unless the physical Trezor device instructs you to do so." If you forgot the PIN of an initialised device, a factory reset is required first. ^[9]
• Ledger: Ledger calls restoring from the Secret Recovery Phrase the way to regain access on a new or backup device, and says a lost or stolen device is protected by its PIN. ^[11][12] Its articles are rendered dynamically, so we could not read them in full at the time of writing; open them directly before acting.
• Lost the device AND the backup: Ledger states that without a backup device or the optional Ledger Recover service, regaining access is impossible, and that it cannot retrieve your phrase or PIN. ^[12] Assume the same logic for any non-custodial wallet.

If the device was stolen, assume the thief lacks the PIN but move the funds to a freshly generated wallet anyway once you have restored, and treat the old seed as burned if it was ever stored near the device.

Case 2 - You lost the seed phrase but the device still works

This is urgent but not hopeless. The device still holds the keys. Do not update the firmware, reset the device or enter a wrong PIN repeatedly, because a reset would destroy the only copy. Ledger specifically advises against updating the OS when the phrase is lost and recommends moving assets to temporary accounts first, then setting up the device as new with a new phrase. ^[13]

In practice: unlock the device, send everything to a new wallet whose backup you have written down and checked (guide 5), and retire the old one. Small test first.

Case 3 - Suspected phishing or compromise

Typical signs: you typed the seed into a website or app, you approved a transaction you did not understand, someone "from support" contacted you, or an email asked you to "verify" your wallet. Trezor and Ledger both publish scam guides that state their staff will not ask for your recovery words. ^[14][15]

1. If the seed was exposed: assume it is stolen. Create a new wallet on a clean device and move the funds immediately, largest first.
2. If an exchange account is at risk: change the password from a clean device, revoke API keys, and use the exchange's own lock features. Kraken's Global Settings Lock, for example, blocks adding withdrawal addresses and changing email, 2FA or API settings. ^[22] Check your exchange's equivalent in its help centre.
3. If you copied an address from your history and sent funds to a lookalike: this is "address poisoning", where an attacker sends dust from an address that resembles one of yours. Ledger and Trezor both document it. ^[16] Always verify the full address on the device screen.
4. Report it (see Case 8) and keep evidence.

Case 4 - You sent to a wrong address

If the address is valid, the transfer is final. On the XRP Ledger, for instance, a payment is final once it is in a validated ledger and cannot be reversed. ^[21] If the recipient is an exchange or a person you can identify, ask them in writing to return it; whether they do is their choice. If the address belongs to nobody (a typo that happens to be valid), there is no one to ask.

Case 5 - You sent on the wrong network

What happens depends on whether you hold the keys at the destination.

• Destination is your own self-custody wallet and both networks are EVM-compatible (the Ethereum family): the same address exists on every EVM chain, so the funds are generally sitting at your address on the other chain. Adding that network to your wallet usually reveals them; a token may need to be imported by its contract address. This is explained in a general educational article, not in an official specification, so treat it as a lead. ^[17] OKX similarly says recovery of a wrong-network withdrawal to your own wallet requires access to the private key or seed of that address. ^[6]
• Destination is an exchange: the exchange must be willing to recover. Kraken lists wrong-network and unsupported-token deposits as cases it handles for a fee, and says an unlisted asset on a network it does not support is "one of the most complex to recover". ^[1] OKX says deposits on unsupported networks are generally not refundable, with reasonable efforts to assist and no guarantee. ^[5] Crypto.com's help article says funds sent to an address it does not manage cannot be recovered, and that retrieval of unsupported-token deposits may not be possible in some cases. ^[7]
• Non-EVM chains (XRP Ledger, Stellar, Cardano, Algorand, Hedera, IOTA and others): addresses are not shared between chains, so the EVM trick does not apply. Recovery depends on the receiving service.

Case 6 - You forgot the memo or destination tag

For XRP, XLM and HBAR deposits, the tag or memo tells the exchange which customer to credit (guide 8). The exchanges in our list publish these procedures:

Fees change; each exchange states them upfront.

Open the ticket the same day, do not resend, and attach the evidence. Kraken's XRP page also warns that a deposit without a tag may be credited far later than usual or, in some cases, not at all. ^[2]

Case 7 - The exchange freezes withdrawals

Withdrawal freezes have a history. Celsius paused withdrawals on 2022-06-12 and filed for Chapter 11 in New York shortly after; the FTX Group's Chapter 11 petition in Delaware is dated 2022-11-11. ^[18] The practical lesson is the difference between custody models: coins held on an exchange depend on that company staying able to pay out, while coins in your own non-custodial wallet do not.

What users could do, in general terms:

• Do not rush more deposits in. Withdraw whatever the platform allows if it is still functioning, and avoid being talked into "unlocking" fees.
• Read the platform's terms and official notices, and keep account statements; in an insolvency, claims are usually filed through a court-appointed process, with the notice published by the debtor or the court.
• Consider legal advice from an Israeli lawyer familiar with cross-border insolvency and crypto. Possible routes in general include filing a claim in the foreign proceeding, joining a group of claimants, and a complaint to the relevant regulator. We did not verify the details of Israeli or foreign procedures, so this is a list of questions to ask a lawyer, not legal advice.
• Document the tax side (guide 9); losses may have tax consequences, which a CPA can explain.

Notes: the Cleary Gottlieb source we used does not discuss how customer deposits were treated in those cases, and we make no claim about recovery rates.

Case 8 - Reporting fraud in Israel

• Israel Police: a complaint about fraud can be filed in person at a station, or through the online complaint service on gov.il (identification through the national login is required, and the online request becomes an official complaint only after police processing). In an emergency call 100. ^[19] We could not open the gov.il page automatically (the site blocks automated access), so confirm the current form and steps in your browser.
• Israel Securities Authority (ISA): the authority publishes public warnings about unlicensed or unsupervised investment offers on its website; search the "warnings" section of the ISA site before sending money to anyone who approached you. ^[20] We did not find a stable URL for the warnings page, so use the site's own navigation.
• Your bank and card issuer: call at once if money left your bank account; they may be able to stop a pending transfer.
• The exchange involved: report the destination address and TxIDs; some can freeze an account that received stolen funds.

Common mistakes

• Panic transactions. Sending more "to unlock" the first one.
• Typing the seed into a website, including a convincing "restore" page. Real recovery happens on the device. ^[9]
• Calling phone numbers from search results that claim to be Trezor, Ledger or exchange support. Use links from the official site only.
• Waiting. Several recovery services have deadlines, such as Bybit's 180 days. ^[3]
• Resetting a working device before the funds are moved.
• Paying an upfront fee to a "recovery expert".
• Assuming a network error is always fatal. On EVM chains it is often fixable by the owner of the keys. ^[17]

If something goes wrong

Support says the case is unrecoverable. Ask for that in writing with the reason, and keep the transaction record. You can still consult a lawyer, but do not expect a reversal.

You are not sure whether a message is from the real support. Close it, go to the official site by typing the address, and use the help centre from there.

You lost access to an exchange account (2FA lost). That is an account-recovery case with the exchange's verification team, separate from wallets. Prepare your ID and the original sign-up email.

You think you may have been scammed but funds are still there. Move them to a fresh wallet on a clean device first, then report.

Official help articles

• Kraken - Crypto assets deposit recovery ^[1]
• Kraken - Destination Tag for XRP deposits; Global Settings Lock ^[2][22]
• Bybit - Recover a missing tag/memo deposit; recover an unsupported deposit ^[3][4]
• OKX - Unsupported deposits; mistaken wrong-network withdrawal ^[5][6]
• Crypto.com - Missing crypto deposits ^[7]
• Bits of Gold - Rejected deposit ^[8]
• Trezor - Recover wallet on Model T; passphrase issues; scams and phishing ^[9][10][15]
• Ledger - Restore with Secret Recovery Phrase; lost or stolen device; scams; address poisoning ^{[11][12][13][14][16]}
• Israel Police online complaints (gov.il) and the Israel Securities Authority site ^[19][20]

This guide is educational and is not legal, financial or tax advice.

Sources