Funny enough, I can talk for hours about Bitcoin but know almost nothing about how the other crypto world works with all the bridges, swaps, etc. (because Crypto is crap, right?) But unfortunately, I ended up in a situation where I had to receive USDT over Tron from my brother. Twice.

Coincidentally, I listened to the WBD podcast with Samson Mow where he talked about this Aqua wallet, how it combines the best of both worlds - non-custodial, easy to use, can receive USDT and swap to BTC, all this stuff. So, I downloaded it, generated a Tron address, received USDT, and immediately converted it to BTC. It worked like a charm.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and we had to repeat the same process again, so I just told my brother to send it over and prepared to convert it to BTC, but the notification was not popping up. I waited a bit, force-closed the wallet, opened it again, refreshed every second - the transaction was not there. So, there is a Tron blockchain explorer - I thought - so we should look there. I searched for my Tron address in the block explorer and found, to my big surprise, hundreds of transactions, different balances for different tokens - a very active Tron address. It didn't really look like the address you used once, but the latest transaction was there and it was correct.

Then I realized it's not my address after all. Aqua uses a custodian company called sideshift.ai and the address is a custodian address they temporarily use to redirect to your Aqua wallet. Quite confusing, I felt the same way you feel when somebody hands you over an Android phone when you've been using the iPhone all your life.

Expecting the worst, I opened a ticket with Jan3, but they said I needed to go directly to sideshift. Sideshift's policy on the website says the recovery of the tokens is a chargeable event with $200 USD + on-chain fee. It didn't sound very promising, but still better than nothing. So, I clicked the chat bubble and started typing.

To my great and very pleasant surprise, a guy named Mac was able to get the full amount of the original transfer directly to my Aqua wallet within 30 minutes since I opened a ticket.

So, is it a happy end? Not sure. Although the support was really amazing and I'm grateful for getting my funds back, probably it's still not safe to give this wallet to your grandma. I think people familiar with Tron and using USDT transactions via Tron on the daily basis cannot imagine that the Tron on Aqua is not working the same way as Tron on any other shitcoin wallet. Maybe another reason to make fun of bitcoin maxis, as the current sentiment that I see is that bitcoin maxis are like boomers. Totally disagree, but it is what it is. Do not recommend Aqua to somebody who is an active Tron user. Do not give it to your grandma (yet?). And do not expect that it works like bitcoin wallet, read the fine print.