I'm working to understand ERC-20 tokens. I believe that I'm confused on a detail based on a previous SO question. Please allow me to use the Basic Attention Token (BAT) as an example.
I have a Ledger Nano. On that Ledger Nano, I have $1.00 worth of Ether for the purpose of learning how this works. I know I can send and receive Ether via the Ether wallet app. I'm interested in converting that $1.00 of Ether to BAT.
To do, I thought I would use ShapeShift. My question is, where am I sending the Ether to? From my understanding of a previous SO question, you don't have a wallet address for ERC-20 tokens. In other words, someone doesn't formally have a BAT wallet. Instead, the BAT contract manages that for you. At this point, I don't know if I'm misunderstanding something about ERC-20 tokens / wallets, or if ShapeShift just has a confusing UI.
In ShapeShift, you choose what you want to convert from (ETH) and what you want to convert to (BAT). You then say how much (ETH) you want to convert. It then asks you for "your Basic Attention Token address" and "Your Ether Refund address". I was expecting that since I already selected BAT, that the contract address would already be selected. Then the "Ether Refund address" would just be my public Ethereum address.
Do I need to setup a new wallet via MyEtherWallet that is specific for my BAT tokens? I then assume I could use that wallet's public address as the "Basic Attention Token address" in ShapeShift. This seems correct. However, it seems like it contradicts how I thought tokens worked.
Thank you for helping me understand this.