Sending and receiving without cooking your money

Once you can send confidently, the rest of this stuff stops feeling scary. Everything below is about making sure the money leaves your hands and arrives at the other end.

Addresses look weird on purpose

A crypto address is a long string of letters and numbers. It's designed to be copy-pasted, not typed. If you ever find yourself typing one by hand, stop.

What to eyeball every time:

• First 4 characters and last 4 characters match what the vendor sent.
• The network is right (see the previous guide, this is the step that eats money).
• Your wallet didn't "auto-format" anything. Clipboard hijackers exist. They swap the address you copied for the attacker's address.

The test amount rule

First time sending to any new address: send a few dollars first. Wait for it to confirm on the other side. Then send the rest. This one habit has saved more people than every other tip on this site combined.

Which chain for which job

• Bitcoin on-chain: reliable, slow, fees vary wildly. Fine for larger amounts, painful for a $20 payment when the network is busy.
• Lightning: Bitcoin, but instant and near-free. Perfect for small payments if both sides support it.
• USDT/USDC on Tron (TRC20): the standard for vendor payments. Cheap fees, fast, universally accepted.
• USDT/USDC on Ethereum (ERC20): works, but you'll pay real money in gas. Only use if the vendor requires it.
• Monero (XMR): private by default. Fees are cents. Use when the vendor supports it and you value privacy.

Gas, in plain English

Gas is the fee you pay the network to include your transaction. On Bitcoin and Ethereum it's a bidding system: pay more, confirm sooner. Your wallet picks a reasonable default. If you're not in a rush, set it to slow and save money. If the vendor gave you a payment window, use standard, not slow.

Memo and tag fields

Some coins (XRP, XLM, EOS, ATOM on some exchanges) use a memo or destination tag on top of the address. Exchanges use one big shared address per coin and the memo tells them which customer the deposit belongs to. Skip the memo and your funds land in the exchange's pile with no way to identify them.

If a vendor gives you both an address and a memo, both go in. If it's a personal wallet, there's usually no memo.

Receiving: also do it right

1. Open the wallet you actually want the coins in. Not the exchange, unless you specifically want them on the exchange.
2. Pick the right coin and the right network.
3. Copy the address. Send it to the person paying you.
4. Every wallet can generate a new address for every receive. That's a privacy win. Take it when the wallet offers it.