Let me start off by making this very clear; we are in the Wild West of cryptocurrency times. Coins are skyrocketing and then taking a bloodbath the next day, ICO's raise million in funding then explode from within (looking at you Tezos!), and new ERC-20 tokens seem to pop up every single day. All this while governments and banks struggle to catch up with cryptocurrency. Needless to say, there is a lot going on in the cryptosphere at all times. I know the first ICO I participated in was NOT very clear on how to go about claiming my new tokens. This is why I decided to put together this tutorial to show you how to find your ERC-Tokens and keep them secure.
Where My Tokens At?
The first time I bought into an ICO was a bit unnerving to say the least! A website says “Send ETH to this address and we promise to send you these other tokens”. It can feel like a bit of a crap shoot to be sure, but if you have done your homework and truly believe in the project it should mostly work out for you. Once I DID send my ETH I realized, where do my tokens actually go?? Maybe they don't even ask for a deposit wallet that supports your new token, so how do I access my new ERC-20 tokens? Stay calm! Your tokens are out there on the Ethereum blockchain and still safe.
How To Find Your Tokens
You most likely already set yourself up for a win on this one and you don't even know it. To even participate in an ICO or to buy tokens you need an Ether wallet that supports ERC20 tokens to make your purchase. If you send ETH for a token purchase your new token will now be tied to the private key of the wallet you sent the ETH from. You will need a few pieces of information to accomplish and this is where Etherscan.io comes in.
You can use this great website Etherscan.io to find the information about your token, including the contract address which will be necessary to find your tokens! This is a great free resource for finding token information and when I bout my first ICO tokens I went here to find my token's contract address. Just toss in the name of the token in the search box and you should get a suggestion for your token. It will show you that all important “contract address” for your token. In my case it was for NDC and the contract address is 0xa54ddc7b3cce7fc8b1e3fa0256d0db80d2c10970. Copy this info and lets save it for the next step.
Importing Your Tokens To A Supported Wallet
Now that we have the contract address for the token we can import our tokens into our wallet. Of course you need an Ethereum wallet that supports ERC20 tokens, and not every wallet does. After looking at the popular options like MyEtherWallet, Parity, & MetaMask I decided to go with the popular Chrome/Firefox extension MetaMask as my Ether wallet of choice.
This is where I initially sent my ETH to and then made my token purchase also from this same wallet. Which ever ERC20 supported wallet you decided to go with, all of them will need that “contract address” to import your tokens. In MetaMask I went to my “Tokens” section and added a new token by entering in the contact address for my token. VICTORY!
The Early Bird Gets The Token
Success! We were able to add our tokens to our wallet! Buying ERC-20 tokens can be a bit stressful if you think that your coins are lost to the Nothing. My advice is to always purchase your tokens from a token enabled wallet like MetaMask in the first place and it makes finding your tokens a lot easier. No matter what, your tokens are out there, they just need to be added to your wallet using the contract address of that specific token. Now that you know how to successfully find your tokens, go forth and snap up those great ICO deals before that early bird beats you to the punch. ICO's can be tricky to navigate and carry a lot of risk, but as long as you do your own research and believe in the project the possible returns can certainly be worth it!
‘Stache Those Tokens To The MOOOOoooon!
I think I actually have some missing erc20 tokens… Will try this tutorial tomorrow on a real computer. Thanks Stache!
Happy to help! Hopefully you find those tokens! Also, a good way to find any airdropped coins you might have gotten without knowing it. I will cover airdrops in an upcoming post!
Ok, I have my Token on MetaMask.. now how do I manage the Token? I have BQX in my wallet but MetaMask only lets me send ETH.
Thanks in advance!
Yeah I love MetaMask, but the one feature they don’t support yet is native sending of tokens from their platform. I found this great step-by-step tutorial on how to send your ERC-20 tokens from your MetaMask to a MyEthereumWallet.
http://www.tokenverse.com/blog/how-to-transfer-your-mbrs-using-metamask-and-myetherwallet-ethplorer-explanation-step-by-step/
I only planned on sitting on my tokens, but I guess if you want to trade them then perhaps MyEtherWallet is a better choice. Hope this helps!
Hi. I would like to ask something. I made a stupid mistake and didnt read properly the ico instructions so I send my ether from my ledger nano s wallet and bigger mistake writing receiving adress for the tokens i will get at the same ledger nano ether wallet. So now my bitdegree tokens are stuck somewhere and I really dont know how to fix this… do you have any suggestion. Is there a possibility to solve this?
To clarify things. I was buying an ico token Bitdegree on ethereum platform.
Typically if you send coins to a wrong address there is NO getting them back. Sorry!
pls how do i transfer my token from myethereum wallet
Hi Stanley, I am actually working on a My Ethereum Wallet article that might help with this. Look for it soon!
Hi ,
If you can help , i have heard that a lot of people are making money just by trading
different ICOs (tokens i guess). I have a eth wallet but how can I transfer tokens directly to ethereum?
should I use a different wallet everytime I buy an ICO ?
Hi, tokens just WORK on ethereum and you would have to exchange them for ETH if that is what you wanted. If it is an ERC20 token you don’t need multiple wallets as a wallet that supports ERC20 tokens should support the coin.
question. i sent my CRPT tokens to my ETH wallet in Coinbase. I can see the transaction on the https://etherscan.io/ but how to i pull it to another wallet that will show my tokens.
Hi Angelique, Coinbase does not support ERC-20 tokens. You have to have an ETH wallet that specifically supports these tokens. Your tokens may very well be lost. There is no way to “unsend” these tokens and if you send tokens to a wrong address the may be unrecoverable forever. I would reach out to both CRPT and Coinbase support for help in the matter.
So I think I did something even more silly. I purchased tokens without even setting up a wallet for ETC. Can I now set up a wallet from Metamask and transfer the tokens into there? Boy! What a learning curve this is!
Hi Louise, yes if you purchased your ETC on an exchange you should be able to move it to your own wallet. If you don’t have a good wallet already, I would actually recommend going with Exodus instead of Metamaks for storing ETC in particular.
Hi great article, I purchased some ERC20 tokens a few days ago and I can view the transaction on etherscan.io by clicking Token Transfers I can see my tokens I purchased against my ETH address. I purchased through Exodus wallet and know I know they don’t support ERC20 tokens. I see there is a method for importing Exodus private keys into myetherwallet then sending the tokens to my Exodus wallet, but Exodus say that I won’t be able to view my ERC20 tokens even though they have arrived from myetherwallet…..I don’t like that!! So can I leave the tokens on etherscan.io and forget about it for 12 months as example or do I need to trannfer the tokens to a wallet. Thanks…..i.e are they safe on etherscan.io
Hi Steve, so Etherscan.io is just an online tool for looking at the Ethereum blockchain. It does NOT hold your ERC-20 tokens. I love Exodus wallet, but it is not a good place to keep your ERC-20 tokens. I suggest using Metamask or leaving them with MyEtherWallet.
Hello, I think I made a mistake and purchase ERC-20 tokens “XYO” from my ethereum wallet in exodus. I can see the transfer in etherscan.io and would like to know if I can somehow export them into Metamask or MyEtherWallet. If so, how would I do that?
Hi Mel, yes you can do that. Just look for the XYO token on etherscan.io and copy the “contract” number and then paste that into your Metamask and you should see the tokens show up there as well. I am not sure how you purchased an ERC-20 token from within Exodus as it does not allow that feature.
Good morning , love your website . But i needed a little help , to recover a ico token purchase . On saturday May 19 2018 i purchased 1 ETH , WORTH OF XYO. And transferred it into my Meta Mask account it show up as 94000 and change into my account . Everything looked find , on monday 5/21/18 checked my meta mask account and they were not there . went to etherscan and it shows transaction and amount . it still shows my ETH in meta mask but not XYO TOKENS . Can you please help to recover .. thank you a. laudani
Hi Anthony, so you sent 1 ETH to purchase tokens and it left your Meta Mask and you could see your tokens in Meta Mask, then 2 days later your original ETH you used for the purchase was back in your wallet and you had no XYO tokens? If this is the case then they may have refunded your token purchase. If that original ETH is not what is back in your Meta Mask then I would try to add the token contract directly to Meta Mask and see if they come up. Good luck!
Hi,I would like to know why is it when you sign up for some airdrops and you put your correct ETH address to receive your ER20 tokens it says ETH address is wrong yet it is the correct address.This does not make any sence to me,can you tell me why this happens if you know.
Kind Regards
Frank
Hey Frank, this is hard to say. It could be because the address you used is from a wallet or application that does not support ERC20 tokens as not all Ethereum wallets do. Which wallet where you using?
Hello, I hope you can help me. I probably made a big mistake. I used the Etherscan address to have tokens sent which I bought in different ICO’s. I can see the tokens on Etherscan, but how can I now transfer them to MetaMask? The address on Etherscan is different from the MetaMask wallet.
Hi Adriana, sorry to hear this! If you used an address that was NOT your own as you say then there is probably no getting these tokens back. Have you tried the steps in this article to add the contract addresses for those tokens to your Metamask wallet?
Thank you for your reply 🙂 But there’s a misunderstanding, the etherscan address is my own, it’s my Exodus address. I’d like to know if I can send the tokens I have in Etherscan to a MetaMask wallet.
AHhhh ok that was some important information you left out there!!! Totally can recover them then – use these instructions: https://support.exodus.io/article/128-how-do-i-receive-unsupported-erc20-tokens
In the instructions is says to use MyEtherWallet, but I would use MyCrypto.com instead as it is the updated version of MyEtherWallet and is easier to use. Hope that helps!
Alright! Thank you so much your advice and your time 🙂
The ‘Stache is here to help!
This article helps the most basic investor. Where do you find your tokens if you have done 3000 airdrops? One investment is easy. When you have 3000 I can’t be checking 3000 telegram channels on the off chance that they offer the token addy which you generally have to ask for. SOMEONE FILL THIS NEED AND YOU WILL BE RICH. ALL TOKEN ADDY’S IN ONE PLACE. One list!
that is basically what you can do on Etherscan, any Ethereum based token you can search for there and it gives you the token address.
Hi there Mr stache,
I recently transferred my 0x tokens from my exchange wallet to what I thought was my MTM 0x wallet, but was in reality the 0x CONTRACT address.
I can see the transaction on Etherscan and that the coins are sitting in the 0x Contract address. However, they don’t seem to be aware of it. It’s all business as usual from their side -_-.
Is there any way I can get in touch with the team managing that contract address so that they can redirect the tokens to my MTM 0x wallet? If so, how?
Please advise :).
Regards,
Nann.
Hi Nann, sorry to hear this! That is a tricky situation, I would certainly recommend getting in touch with their team about it. You would be surprised how responsive some of these projects actually are. You might also see if the exchange you sent from can help as well (although this is a long shot). Hope that helps!
hello
I originally purchased eos tokens with the Jaxx classic wallet using shapeshift, Jaxx no longer supports eos in there wallet so im wondering how to recover my tokens into myetherwallet? thanks in advance for any help on this??
Hi Chris, that’s a tricky question. I don’t have much experience with Jaxx to be honest. I think if you reach out to their team they would be more than happy to guide you. If I had the knowledge I would surely share it!
I have tokens in etherscan but when I try to send them to metamask, metamask says
“Token has already been added.” but the amount doesn’t show that should be there.
First, you don’t hold any token in etherscan. Etherscan is just an Ethereum blockchain explorer and it just shows you data that exists. You can’t send and receive to Etherscan either. What token are you trying to add to your MetaMask? Are you sure you are looking at your right account number for MetaMask?
Hi Shea,
I started mining in 2013 with BITCOIN.CZ. Because of a lot of issues I stopped mining. But, I had a wallet and also tokens. After a few years I found out the BITCON.CZ was not there anymore. I really do not know if my wallet was on there site.
Is there a way to import my old wallet in a new one, by using the tokens?
Thanks for your help/advice.
Best regards,
Peter
Sorry my email adress was not correct. Here is the right one.
Hi Major Peter, sorry to hear you have had this issue. I am not familiar with bitcoin cz but it seems to redirect to slushpool now so maybe they took it over? Try contacting their support about your login info and you can perhaps recover your coins that way. Typically these mining pools you don’t own your own keys to crypto on their platform, so if you can’t get the login and don’t have the private keys you may be royally screwed! Sorry! Let me know how it turns out.