Gate.io Blog Tether Recovery of Lost $87 Million

Tether Recovery of Lost $87 Million

21 February 11:40

[TL;DR]

-Do you know that Tether has recovered $87 Million worth of USDT lost due to wrong addresses since its launch to date?
-This information was made public last week by its CTO Paolo Ardoino.
-How did they do it?
-How do I recover my lost USDT token?
These are the subjects of discussion in this post.

Have you learned that approximately 3.8 million Bitcoins amounting to $30 billion are missing?

This data is one of the many statistics of cryptocurrencies that have been lost in different fashions. USDT also makes up part of this statistics, but Tether has a mechanism that allows it to retrieve lost Tether coins. The mechanism is provided to help users retrieve their monies when they mistakenly transfer their USDT to the wrong Decentralized Finance (DeFi) addresses.

Sometime in September 2021, some Chinese traders sent out an SOS message on Twitter over a $1 million USDT that had been sent to the wrong DeFi address. Three days later, their money was been sent back to them from Tether. Paolo Ardoino then released a tweet “Use DeFi projects at your own risk but if you do, at least make sure to use a Tether. 1M $USDt recovered and returned to the legitimate owners”.

If you are a Redditor and interact in crypto space or other online forums, you discover that wrong wallet addresses are quite a common occurrence. The picture is a screenshot of one of such users who sent USDT to the wrong address.

Source: Reddit

The irreversible nature of cryptocurrency transactions makes it almost impossible for users to get back their funds if they pay to the wrong DeFi wallet address. In most cases, the only way you can get back your funds is if you know the owner of the wallet address you mistakenly sent to, and this is highly improbable.

How Was Tether Able to Recover the Lost $87 Million?

According to Paolo Ardoino, certain users make mistakes with the DeFi address they are sending to and some of these addresses don't have the ability to retrieve the tokens.

However, Tether has a recovery mechanism that is used to retrieve these monies. Tether can blacklist addresses on Ethereum and Tron blockchains, and freeze the funds in these addresses. They then issue new USDT to the original owners. Since Tether’s launch in 2014, it has helped users across the world recover their lost USDT. The latest is about $1.5M USDT which the company helped users retrieve last week.
To prevent the possibility of a scam, Tether freezes all the tokens in the wrong address. They then reissue the token to an escrow address so they can safely verify the ownership of the USDT before returning the USDT.
In tandem with the ability of Tether over Ethereum blockchain addresses, below is a picture of a news headline on Yahoo Finance on 14th January 2022.

Yahoo Finance

According to news reports, the three addresses which contained $160m USDT were frozen on request from law enforcement. Data also suggests that close to 600 addresses on the Ethereum blockchain have been by Tether since 2017.

The Recovery is Not Free
The recovery of USDT by Tether does not occur for free as the company charges 10% of the lost amount or $1000 depending on whichever is larger.

What to do When you Lose your USDT to the Wrong Address
Before you try to place a recovery request, note that Tether only accepts recovery requests for amounts above $1000. Also, note that Tether can only recover funds from addresses on the Ethereum and Tron blockchains. If you transfer Tether to addresses that do not support USDT, you may lose your funds forever.

According to Tether’s official website, “Tether may attempt to assist in the recovery of Tether TOKENS transferred to”

· Contracts that did not properly implement the SafeERC20 library for withdrawals
· Tether Token Operation Contract or any similar operational contract
· “A destination that Tether determines to be recoverable.”

If you place a recovery request with Tether, you will need to provide the following:

1. Transaction ID
2. Deposit Address
3. Amount
4. A complete de_script_ion of the actions/events leading to the current problem/issue;
5. Full de_script_ion of the steps you have taken to retrieve the amount.
6. You may be asked to provide additional documents based on Tether’s discretion.

To start the process of requesting your lost tokens, visit Tether Support

Author: Gate.io Observer: M. Olatunji
Disclaimer:
* This article represents only the views of the observers and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all other cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.

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Tether Recovery of Lost $87 Million

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How Was Tether Able to Recover the Lost $87 Million?

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