Topic: Sent Litecoin to Bitcoin Address, How to recover? (Read 773 times)

Are people even reading replies in this thread? I stated above exactly how the funds can be recovered.

If you study this situation deeply enough, it becomes clear that all the funds that you sent to the wallet address, which is related to a completely different coin, this can only mean one thing.  You will lose everything that you sent.  This is the case with erc 20 coins, the situation is much better, but not with altcoin and bitcoin.

For new people it can be very confusing which coin to buy. Litecoin and Bitcoin actually have 2 very different names at least. But there were some bitcoin services (i think on bitcoin.com) where you were given the option to buy Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin Core. And most people selected the first one and had it sent to a Bitcoin address instead of BCH address. I am sure they did a software update and the prefix is different to avoid confusion but initially right after the fork many people had this issue.

Same with the Bitcoin ATM. Most people might get confused, pick the wrong coin and get it sent to the wrong network. Hence like others have said here, you should put in a check for this to prevent it from happening or you will get angry customers all the time.

May I know how much amount losses because of this tragedy?
Seems quite difficult to recover their funds.
Maybe you need to contact the Litecoin team, this is the best thing to help to recover their funds

The former is correct. A private key is just a sequence of 32 bytes, and a public key hash (which the address is derived from) is just a sequence of 20 bytes, so it's up to the client software to check that the key and address are associated with the correct network. As stated above, internally the representation does not use anything identifying the network; it's only when base58 encoding a "human readable" address or WIF privkey that the network prefix is added.

This is explained (in some detail) at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses . Steps 4 to 9 are solely for converting the internal 20 byte public key hash to base58 format, which does denote the correct network, but the client (and blockchain) only use the result of step 3, which has no network information attached.

This means it's possible to use the same private key across multiple coins/blockchains (a brainwallet is one example of doing this) but of course the funds cannot be sent across blockchains.


Bitcoin Core (and most likely Litecoin Core) does check that the address is valid when you attempt to send funds, so something else in the ATM system is decoding that address without verifying it is valid for the currency the user has selected. Since the ATM supports multiple currencies, it probably uses custom software. Or maybe it just phones home to a backend that does everything. Either way, it seems something is blindly decoding the receive address without checking that the first byte matches the network the user has selected.

Well, I guess its 100% there's no chance for you to recover it. Because I always saw in the exchange that every time you deposit or withdraw there is a reminders often there that once you send it to different address it won't recover anymore, so same goes with you case mate.

so in basic terms, if you send bitcoin to a litecoin address, its possible you can use the bitcoin private key to generate the litecoin wallet with the bitcoin in it? but you still wont get your bitcoin back?? you will now have some litecoin.
or am i reading that wrong? or could you then sign the litecoin wallet and send your bitcoin back to yourself? will the core allow that?

it really seems that when altcoins were created, they core devs should have patched in a check that would make invalid tx's fail and those coins bounced back..

He is the owner of the machine that’s why he is also concern about he’s costumers and maybe some of them don’t know what to do so he isn’t doing them a favor
And if we will put our feet on their shoes we can see the desperation so the owner is extending effort to do the move.and besides if owner don’t give them this favor who will do for them!?

But what you’ve said is a good answer towards OPs concern and hope there are still way to recover the floating coins in the air.

I don't think it will be easily returned it has entered the wrong address. and maybe you can try to re-learn from experience if the address of each type of coin has been set according to the smart coin contract

Sounds like you want to pass them onto the ATM companies support team.  Their machine screwed up, so it is their fault.

For basic P2PKH addresses (Bitcoin '1', Litecoin 'L') it should be possible to recover the funds by copying the private key from the Bitcoin wallet to the Litecoin wallet.

The catch is that keys in Wallet Interchange Format (WIF) will look very different between the two networks, even though the decoded raw bytes are the same. You (or rather, the recipient, the customer) would need to export from Bitcoin, convert Bitcoin to Litecoin WIF, and import into Litecoin.

This is what the same private key looks like on both Bitcoin and Litecoin:

BITCOIN
Private key hex: 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001
Private key WIF: KwDiBf89QgGbjEhKnhXJuH7LrciVrZi3qYjgd9M7rFU73sVHnoWn
Public key hex: 0279be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798
HASH160 hex: 751e76e8199196d454941c45d1b3a323f1433bd6
Address: 1BgGZ9tcN4rm9KBzDn7KprQz87SZ26SAMH

LITECOIN
Private key hex: 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001
Private key WIF: T33ydQRKp4FCW5LCLLUB7deioUMoveiwekdwUwyfRDeGZm76aUjV
Public key hex: 0279be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798
HASH160 hex: 751e76e8199196d454941c45d1b3a323f1433bd6
Address: LVuDpNCSSj6pQ7t9Pv6d6sUkLKoqDEVUnJ

Note that only the WIF and Address fields differ, and that's only because they are in base58check format, which uses a prefix specifically for the network. Internally to each client they are using exactly the same numbers, regardless of the network.

Script for sending to Bitcoin address 1BgGZ9tcN4rm9KBzDn7KprQz87SZ26SAMH: DUP HASH160 PUSHDATA(20)[751e76e8199196d454941c45d1b3a323f1433bd6] EQUALVERIFY CHECKSIG

Script for sending to Litecoin address LVuDpNCSSj6pQ7t9Pv6d6sUkLKoqDEVUnJ: DUP HASH160 PUSHDATA(20)[751e76e8199196d454941c45d1b3a323f1433bd6] EQUALVERIFY CHECKSIG

(They're identical. Both addresses map to the hex sequence 751e76e8199196d454941c45d1b3a323f1433bd6 internally.)

---

It's probably also worth considering that some of the more tech savvy customers may have already 'recovered' their funds on the Litecoin network, even after complaining to the OP and being compensated in Bitcoin.

First off  you gave them 2 choices  when only one will work.

So you lose  the money and will have to pay all the people  that  did this on your machine.


Second the company that sold you the gear  fucked up  and you may be able to get them to cover your losses after you pay your customers.


Yeah it sucks.... 


Here is the deal 1 machine 1 coin btc and that is it. Clearly label the machine as cash to btc.

How bad are the losses you mention 1000 usd    transactions  which is at least 2000 + some small ones.


try and have atm removed  and replaced with a btc only machine.  so it does not happen again.

I don't got it. How could The machine just sends Litecoin to bitcoin address??  Is it really possible when cryto technology is much more advance nowadays. Well if so really happened, there is nothing to do without fixing your ATM machine. Cause there is no recovery option at all. Feel sorry for that incedent  

The system should have confirmation if really want to do the process or cancel because once it is being sent there is no possibility for turning it back. There s no recovery on the blockchain wherein we have to be careful on every address we used before it turn into nothing. It is not compatible for all wallet.

I have friends of mine who send bitcoin to a bitcoincash wallet and i can tell you for sure he lost all his money! Sorry for that.

Is there any flow in your machine with send the litecoin to the Bitcoin address ?
This seems very strange. You customers may be very angry with you when they come to know about it. 
As far as I know it is impossible to recover your money if it is sent to a wrong address or to the wrong network.

Sorry mate, your litecoins are gone forever. You should fix your ATM machine immediately! Because it is a big issue and for this, you can lose a huge amount of money. As the Litecoin and Bitcoin are a totally different coin. So, Once you send Litecoin to any Bitcoin wallet it's mean your LTC is gone.

Is canceling unable to restore it? if it really can't, I don't think I can ever go back because the cryptocurrency system can't be restored as expected. so when sending to bitcoin it must remain to the bitcoin address and if there is an error it will not be able to return

That's pretty unfortunate. Your customers are definitely not obliged to a refund, but this is also partially your fault.

Popular BTC ATMs that I've personally used to test out will always tell you if an address is invalid. If you have a multi-crypto machine, that should be a must thing for you to do, especially when this seems like a big issue. A couple of simple lines of code checking their validity isn't hard for a BTC ATM owner.

Not really. The customer selected Litecoin whilst they inserted an incompatible BTC address which they don't know how to alter so they can get their litecoin back. It's like buying an AMD motherboard and then buying an intel CPU. Not the store's fault they sold you the products.

Let's stop being mean to OP - but there are no ways for you to get user coins back. If you can afford to send out transactions, it should be pretty easy to reimburse those people who placed large orders, shouldn't it be?

you would think by now they would have something patched in the core that would send back coins sent to invalid addresses..
maybe one day they will and OP will become very rich getting all the misplaced bitcoin back.