For a while there we were getting TRX rewards along for our activities inside of Steemit and I think a lot of people, including me, were only accessing or just looking at these rewards inside of the Steemit Wallet. I never moved them or did anything with them. I think that like me, most of you had such a small amount of them that it didn't seem like it was worthwhile to move them anywhere. I never paid much attention to TRX but was pleased I was getting some of it since it is now one of the top 15 cryptos in the world.
But then a few days ago the valuation of them skyrocketed for reasons I don't understand and all of a sudden I wanted to have a look at my "stash" again. I was a bit alarmed and fearful when I looked on the wallet page and the usual Tron section all of a sudden wasn't there anymore.
Now the first thing that i sincerely hoped that you did do was to actually claim these rewards back when they were first appearing on the wallet page because if you didn't, I don't know what to tell you to do, but if you did, and you know where the associated PDF is on your files, getting access to them is easy peasy.
The document will look something like this
The top one is a harmless key and it simply identifies your unique account. The second one is something you should always keep hidden and never show to anyone or put anywhere online. If someone gets a hold of that QR or the associated key, they can steal all your TRX instantly. So yeah, be careful with that one.
You can use the top QR or copy-paste the key and put it into the Tronscan website. This is public information and you can look up the accounts of any public key but not do anything else with it. The blockchain just generally speaking is pretty transparent like this as I am sure you know.
I ran into some trouble actually having ACCESS to these assets though because if you try to import them to most wallets, it simply will not let you. There are of course exceptions but I tried about half a dozen wallets and they were only capable of receiving funds if they were sent from the source, as you would expect. This is where the Private key is so powerful and quick to use and once you do it you will see why it is so damned important that you NEVER let anyone see this information.
I finally was able to get it done in a very easy fashion using a wallet called TronLink Global and you can download the app or browser extension at that link. It states that it only is a Chrome extension but if you are using Brave just know that the extension worked for me and most other Brave users.
Once inside the app you can import your funds by simply clicking on this icon and then scanning your QR code for your Private key.
From that point forward it asks you to create a password for that specific wallet and it is honestly a seriously easy process. I am not a super tech guy so it needed to be simple and I breezed straight through it. I think a lot of people will simply transfer it out immediately to a self-proprietary wallet of some other sort like Exodus or Atomic and getting that done is just a few clicks away.
It really is that easy and I was done in about 10 minutes. You can be as well!
You do need to have the PDF that was provided to you initially though.
I suppose the only important thing is whether or not you actually claimed your rewards while they were easily available to you in the wallet section. If you didn't claim them, I have no idea how it is possible now. It might not be. Perhaps someone out there with more technical expertise than I have - which is near none - can chime in at the comments if claiming them now is even a possibility.