WazirX CEO Defends Fund Transfers Amidst Accusations of $75M Crypto Movement to Exchanges

WazirX founder Nischal Shetty has responded to allegations that the company transferred $75 million worth of crypto assets to two major exchanges without informing users.

The situation arose after the Indian crypto platform disclosed more than 240,000 wallet addresses as part of the requirements of a four-month moratorium granted to it by a Singapore court following a $235 million hack in July.

CoinSwitch’s Accusation

Unpacking the disclosure in an October 21 post on X, CoinSwitch chief executive Ashish Singhal said his team had created a system to make it easier for WazirX users to sift through the voluminous information that had been made available.

He noted his firm’s interest in the matter stems from the fact that it holds Indian rupee and virtual digital assets (VDA) with WazirX. Additionally, he claimed that when the exchange halted transactions following the alleged hack, CoinSwitch was forced to use funds from its treasury to compensate customers, and it is currently pursuing legal action against the exchange to recover the funds used in the exercise.

However, Singhal claimed that while his team was going through the provided data, they discovered that the company had moved a large amount of crypto to several major exchanges in the aftermath of the hacking incident.

According to him, the Mumbai-based crypto firm transferred digital currency worth $72.13 million to Bybit, with another chunk valued at $1.5 million going to KuCoin. Further, the team discovered that of the more than 200,000 addresses it had examined, about half had balances of less than $10, while nearly 18,000 had nothing in them.

Nevertheless, Singhal refrained from sharing more information regarding the alleged movement of funds, citing his company’s ongoing legal proceedings against the exchange.

WazirX’s Response

A day after the assertions, WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty took to social media to give his side of the story. Describing the claims as a “false narrative” and a “coordinated campaign,” Shetty denied there had been any “secret” movement of funds as had been widely reported in the press following the CoinSwitch accusation.

According to him, the company shifted the assets to the exchanges as part of a legitimate process to onboard a new custodian after parting ways with Liminal in the aftermath of the July attack.

He also explained that due to the complexity of custodianship, certain tokens are not supported by all custody providers. As a result, some crypto assets were temporarily moved to exchanges like Bybit and KuCoin while WazirX explored better custody solutions.

Despite offering a $23 million bounty and tapping forensic experts and law enforcement for help, the crypto trading site has yet to recover any of the money stolen in the July attack.

And there seems to be little hope that any of it will ever be gotten back, with the exploiter, ostensibly linked to North Korea, having reportedly already laundered almost all of their ill-gotten gains.