- The dispute over WazirX’s ownership might damage the Indian trade and its users.
- As per the Bnance blog post, we don’t know who is the actual owner of WazirX.
- In a letter to WazirX, Binance demanded that the Indian exchange meet two conditions before the end of the month.
Emails shed some light on the current controversy involving the murky and disputed ownership of WazirX, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, said in a blog post that it had acquired the Indian business in November 2019, making it clear who owned WazirX. Executives from WazirX publicly discussed the purchase.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of Binance, stated in a tweet that “Binance does not hold any shares in Zanmai Labs.” According to a spokesperson for Binance, these reports are “lies”, and the transaction never happened.
On January 26, a day of a national holiday in India, Binance wrote to WazirX, demanding that the Indian exchange complies with two requirements by the end of the month, failing which Binance threatened to terminate its service agreement. It forced the Indian trade to remove references to Binance from its terms of service and post a pre-written “clarificatory statement.”
According to this week’s letter, “Zanmai has not made any incorrect or deceptive assertions about Binance’s role and responsibilities in administering the WazirX platform and Binance’s control over WazirX’s user assets.”
Shetty sent Binance an email stating, “Binance has unilaterally taken huge amounts of money (over USD 67 million) which have been received as trading fees on the WazirX platform.” “Zanmai gave Binance management and ownership of the WazirX platform.”
According to the email chain, WazirX had access to and operated these accounts for Binance, the “absolute owner” of the funds.
Binance was identified in the email chain as “the absolute owner” of the accounts. On July 28, 2021, Schoder replied, “Thank you, Tushar.” “We will start the transfer process and keep you updated.” Any subsequent communications were not visible to CoinDesk.
