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Binance Cuts Ties With WazirX
By Kapil Rajyaguru
The ongoing dispute between world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance and Zanmai Labs, the operator behind India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange WazirX has escalated to another level.
But before we tell you about why Binance Cut ties with WazirX after issuing an ultimatum to move funds, let’s have a brief look at the history of Binance and WazirX and how the dispute started?
In November 2019, WazirX’s ownership was undisputed.
Binance had published a blog post stating that it had purchased WazirX.
But in the summer of 2022, WazirX landed in the hot water with Indian government.
In early August, WazirX’s Mumbai office was raided by Indian authorities on suspicions that exchange had helped 16 fintech companies launder money.
Binance quickly took steps to publicly distance itself from WazirX.
The public spat between Binance and WazirX began on Aug. 5, 2022, when Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted claims that “Binance does not own any shares in Zanmai Labs, the entity operating WazirX and established by the original founders.”
In the days to follow, Zhao stirred panic among users of WazirX. Zhao said Binance could, if it wanted to, shut down the Indian cryptocurrency platform, and advised its users to transfers their funds to Binance.
However, Nischal Shetty, the co-founder of WazirX, rebuffed Zhao’s claims about not controlling the WazirX exchange.
Shetty said that he has legal documents proving the sale of WazirX to Binance but is unable to share them due to legal reasons.
The solution to disputed ownership of WazirX by Binance appears to have emerged after Binance threatened WazirX to either retract the false public statements or terminate the use of Binance wallet service.
Since Zanmai has refused to clarify their misleading statements, Binance gave Zanmai ultimatum till 3 February 2023 to remove the funds from the accounts that they used for WazirX’s operations.
Finally in a tweet on 3rd February 2023, WazirX said it had begun the process of transferring assets to multi-sig wallets, and that it expects the process to be completed “within the next few hours.”
WazirX has reassured that user funds are safe and Users can continue to trade, deposit and withdraw funds as usual.
The latest move give us the clarity as regard to Binance’s interest in the Indian exchange WazirX. It may tame the issue of the ownership for the time being but it still remains to be seen how the authorities perceives the announcement and will Zanmai Labs will ever retract the the alleged misleading statement regarding the ownership of WazirX by Binance?
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