Crypto and Tether, from wallet to voucher

Most exchange offices now take Tether alongside the US Dollar, the UAE Dirham and the Iranian Toman, and the usual worry is that crypto needs a second set of books. It does not. In Nexto, Tether is a currency like any other: you buy it, you sell it, you carry a position in it, and its profit is worked out with the same weighted average as everything else. Trading Tether against the Dollar uses the form you already know from buying and selling currency.

What is genuinely different is the money movement. Bank money arrives with a slip and you decide whether to believe it. Crypto money arrives on a network that has already recorded the whole transaction, and you can check it yourself. This episode is about that difference: the wallet as an account, recording a transaction from nothing but its hash, and the two guards that keep a fake token or a double entry out of your ledger.

What you will learn

• Why a Tether wallet is just another account, with a balance, a statement and a place in the treasury book
• How to record an on-chain transaction by pasting its hash
• What Nexto reads from the network for you, and the one field you still have to fill in
• How to AML-check the counterparty's address before the voucher is posted
• Why the currency is identified by the token contract address and never by its name
• How the duplicate-hash guard stops the same deposit being counted twice
• How to read the warning when your wallet balance and the blockchain disagree

The wallet is an account

An account from the digital wallet category

Your Tether wallet in Nexto is an account, created from the digital wallet category. It has a balance, a statement, and a place in the treasury book and the reports, exactly like a cash box or a bank account. Nothing about it is special-cased, which is why every report you already use keeps working once crypto is in the picture.

The address makes it yours

There is one thing you record for a wallet that you do not record for a cash box: when you create the account, you also enter the network and the wallet address. That address is what later tells Nexto which end of a transaction is yours, so get it right at creation time.

Recording an on-chain transaction

Your customer has sent you Tether and has given you nothing but a string of characters. That string is the transaction hash, and it carries everything: which network, which currency, how much, into which wallet, and whether the network has confirmed it.

Step 1 — Paste the hash

Open the crypto transaction form and paste the hash into its box. You do not tell Nexto the network or the currency; it works that out from the hash itself and queries the network directly.

Step 2 — Read what came back

The lookup returns both ends of the transaction. Nexto sees which end matches your own wallet address and shows it under its own name — USDT Wallet in the recording — and from that works out the direction: a receipt into your wallet. The network, the currency, the amount and the chain's confirmation are filled in as well. You typed none of it.

Step 3 — Name the counterparty

There is exactly one thing the network cannot tell you: who the money belongs to. Pick the customer — in the recording, Shirin Moradi. That is the only judgement you have to make on this form.

Step 4 — AML-check the crypto address

Before you record it, there is something that can be done right here: next to the lookup result sits a button called "AML check counterparty". Press it and the sender's address goes to the service, and within seconds the risk score, the risk level, the address label and the flags on record come back — right here, before anything is posted to the ledger. If that address has a history with a mixer, a sanctioned entity or a hack, you see it before the voucher exists. And never read the number alone: the score can be low while the flags say this address has had indirect contact with somewhere high risk. The same address a second time comes from the cache and takes nothing off your credit.

Step 5 — Fee, description, register

The fee field works like the one on a transfer: the fee you charge the customer for this transaction, or one you pay them, with an amount and a currency. The network fee the blockchain itself took is a different thing and has nothing to do with this box. In the recording there is no fee. Add a description and press the register button, which only becomes active once the lookup has completed — so nothing can be recorded without the network's confirmation behind it.

Step 6 — Check the voucher

The voucher posts with two sides, exactly like a transfer: your USDT Wallet and the customer account. The hash stays on the voucher as the tracking code, so the transaction can be verified on the network at any time.

Wallet against chain

On the same page, after every entry, Nexto measures the balance of that wallet against what the blockchain says. If the two disagree, the warning tells you how much the ledger says, how much the chain says, and the hashes of the transactions that exist on the network but are missing from your ledger.

In the recording the two do not match, because the demo wallet borrows its address from a real wallet. In real work this warning means one thing: you have missed a transaction. The value of it is timing — you find out the same day, not at month end when nobody remembers what happened.

Two guards

A hash can only be recorded once

Paste the same string a second time and the lookup will run, you can name the counterparty and press save, and Nexto refuses it: this transaction has already been recorded. One deposit is never counted twice.

The currency is the contract, not the name

This is the important one. On the network there are dozens of tokens whose name is Tether or something close to it, and that is the common scam: a token whose name reads exactly USDT but whose contract is something else and whose value is zero, a token called UDST with two letters swapped, or USD Coin, which is a different currency altogether. Somebody sends you one of those, your wallet shows the name Tether, you count it as Tether and you hand over the Toman.

Nexto identifies the currency by the address of the token contract, not by the name. Anything arriving from a different contract address does not count as Tether, whatever it calls itself. A person almost never reads a contract address, and reading it would tell them nothing. This is a job only a machine can do.

The token contracts page

The official contract address for each crypto currency on each network is already in place on the token contracts page; all you do is say which ones are active. By default only Tether is on, and for most exchange offices that is enough. The threshold for the wallet-versus-chain warning is on this page too.

Tips and warnings

• Enter the network and the wallet address correctly when you create the wallet account. If the address is wrong, Nexto cannot tell which end of a transaction is yours.
• The register button stays inactive until the lookup finishes. If it will not light up, the problem is the lookup, not the form.
• The fee box is your fee to the customer. Never put the blockchain's own network fee there.
• Run the AML check on an incoming address before you register, not after. The whole value is in seeing the flags before the voucher sits in the ledger — and in reading the flags, not just the score.
• Do not judge an incoming token by the name shown in a wallet app. Only the contract address decides whether it is Tether.
• Treat the wallet-versus-chain warning as work to do today. Every hash it lists is real on the network and missing from your books.
• Trading Tether needs nothing new: the ordinary trade form, and the same position and profit rules as any other currency.

Where to go next

The previous episode, cheques, covers the other instrument that is both there and not there. Next is expenses, group documents and manual entries. If the trading side of Tether is what you need, go back to buying and selling currency and where trade profit comes from — Tether behaves exactly as they describe.

FAQ

Is Tether a separate module in Nexto?

No. Tether is a currency like any other: you trade it on the ordinary trade form, it carries a position, and its profit is calculated with the same weighted average as the US Dollar or the UAE Dirham. Only the movement of the money is different, because it happens on a network.

How do I record an incoming Tether payment?

Open the crypto transaction form, paste the transaction hash, wait for the lookup, then pick the customer the money came from and register it. Nexto reads the network, the currency, the amount, the direction and the confirmation from the chain itself.

What is a transaction hash?

It is a transaction's unique identifier on the network. That one string establishes which network it was on, which currency moved, how much, into which wallet, and whether it is confirmed. Nexto keeps it on the voucher as the tracking code.

How does Nexto stop a fake USDT token being booked as Tether?

It identifies the currency by the token contract address, not by the token's name. Anything arriving from a different contract address does not count as Tether, whatever it is called. The official addresses are already loaded on the token contracts page.

What happens if I paste the same hash twice?

Nexto refuses the entry and tells you the transaction has already been recorded, so one deposit is never counted twice.

My wallet balance does not match the blockchain. What now?

Nexto shows how much the ledger says, how much the chain says, and the hashes that are on the network but not in your ledger. Work through those hashes and record the missing ones; the difference normally means a transaction was missed.