Retrieve Tezos Coins (XTZ) from ICO in 3 Steps
Step-by-Step Guide to retrieving ICO coins and putting them in Temple Wallet
Over the last few months, the Tezos price (like most cryptocurrencies) has surged and news of the ecosystem has been going mainstream. Tezos ($XTZ) has also hit an all-time high of $9.12 on October 4th, 2021 according to ATHCoinIndex. Tezos has also been receiving a lot of traction in the NFT space, which has led to over 25 million+ contract calls and massive growth. There have also been announcements such as Ubisoft becoming a corporate baker, Red Bull Racing becoming the Official Blockchain Partner, and a McClaren Racing NFT project amongst others. Many famous artists such as Whitney Houston, Chief Keef, Quincy Jones, Doja Cat, John Legend, The Game, and Charlie Puth have also minted NFTs on Tezos. Not to mention the Grammy Awards, NFTs being minted on Tezos. This adoption goes hand-in-hand with a marketing push for Tezos as seen by the Tezos banner at Citi Field with the New York Mets.
With all of this growth and more people hearing about Tezos, people are starting to remember the coins they bought from the Tezos ICO at just 47 cents. If you’re one of these people, I hope you bought a lot of tokens and HODL’d through it all!
Over the last few weeks, many people have been reaching out to different members of the Tezos Israel team that need help getting their ICO coins out of locked wallets/certificates. So, this is a tutorial on how to retrieve those tokens and start staking them.
Information you will need from the ICO
- The seed phrase for your wallet
- The email and password you used to make your account from the ICO
- Your public key
- The activation code you should have received from the KYC/AML process
Steps
- KYC/AML Confirmation
- Activate your Wallet
- Import Wallet to Temple
Step 1: KYC/AML Confirmation
First, you must go through the KYC/AML (Know Your Customer/Anti-Money Laundering) process. Anti-Money Laundering (AML) is a common process and policy used by banks to minimize fraudulent activity such as criminal or terrorist funding, money laundering, securities fraud, market manipulation, etc. One of the ways AML goes about this is through KYC. KYC is an identity verification required for essentially all financial transactions. It is needed to ensure that people are who they claim to be.
There was a lot of backlash with the KYC used with the Tezos ICO because, as you might have guessed, people in the cryptocurrency world don’t like being identified by institutions. More in-depth information on that situation can be found here.
To retrieve your tokens, you are required to complete the KYC process. You can do this at verification.tezos.com. When you’re done, it will give you an activation code, which you’ll use in the next step. This process can take up to a few days to complete, so don’t stress if it’s taking a while.
Step 2: Activate Your Wallet
In this step, you will need the activation code from Step 1 and the public hash address (tz address) of the address you are trying to activate. The address that stores your ICO tokens should be on the PDF certificate you received when you first bought the XTZ.
To activate this address, go to ActivaTez and input your public hash address and the activation code you received from Step 1. Once the information is in, hit “Activate”. Give it about 30 seconds, and it should be activated!
Step 3: Import Wallet to Temple Wallet
Once you receive the necessary information from AcitvaTez, you can restore your wallet on any desktop or mobile wallet. I noticed some ICO token retrieval tutorials were using outdated wallets and/or block explorers, but we’ll be using Temple Wallet (previously Thanos Wallet). Temple is the most used wallet in the ecosystem with 90k plus downloads, has a nice UI, and is the most popular Google Chrome-based Tezos wallet.
For these reasons, we’ll be using it to retrieve your tokens.
First, open Google Chrome and make sure you have the Temple Wallet installed. If not, you can download it here. Then, log in to your account before doing anything else.
NOTE: DO NOT CLICK the “Import Wallet using Seed Phrase” under “Restore Account?” on the button of the login page. You’ll see an error message like this. Restoring a wallet without logging will remove any current wallets you have connected to Temple.
Once you’re logged in, click the avatar of a robot in the top right corner. From the dropdown menu, click “Import Account”
From the Import Account screen, you can import your newly activated wallet by importing your Private Key, Mnemonic, or even directly from the Fundraiser if it was already activated!
With your wallet imported and your coins displayed, you are done! You have finished retrieving your tokens from the ICO and they are now yours to delegate, send, purchase goods and services, or whatever else you would like to do with them! You can delegate your tokens to a bakery directly from the Temple Wallet, so you can earn interest while HODL’ing. Learn how to delegate in this article from Madfish.
If this process didn’t work for you at any stage, but you have the necessary information, then I would recommend restarting the process from scratch. Start with your KYC and work your way through it again. This happened to a friend of Tezos Israel’s who couldn’t retrieve his tokens but when they re-started the process, it all worked out.
As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @Adshinder and go follow @TezosIsrael to learn what we are up to!
