WazirX News: Exchange Halts Trading to Develop Withdrawal Strategy

Just hours after revealing a $23 million bounty program to recover stolen funds, Indian crypto exchange WazirX announced a temporary suspension of trading to carry out a forensic data examination.

WazirX Trading Paused, Investors In Panic?

After announcing the WazirX Bounty Program, the crypto exchange announced that the recent cyber attack has impacted its ability to maintain 1:1 collaterals with assets. As a result, they have decided to temporarily pause trading.

The Indian crypto exchange stated that it is conducting forensic data examination as well as security audit procedures to enable withdrawals very soon.

📢 Trading has been temporarily paused

The cyber attack theft has impacted our ability to maintain 1:1 collaterals with assets, and we’ve temporarily paused trading.

We’re conducting thorough forensic data examination and security audit procedures and working to enable…

— WazirX: India Ka Bitcoin Exchange (@WazirXIndia) July 21, 2024

WazirX founder Nischal Shetty said that they would be working to find out the best way to enable withdrawals. “We will need to first analyze all the data to come up with an action plan on what’s the right formula to allow withdrawals since part of the assets have been stolen,” he said.

He further admitted that the path to the total recovery will be longer from here onwards. “Please bear with us while we work towards it,” said Shetty.

Also Read: WazirX Hack Update: Will Investors Get Their Money Back?

Trading Volumes Tank

The trading volumes on the Indian crypto exchange had already tanked on the following day of the $230 million crypto hack. Last Friday, July 19, Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies on WazirX were trading at a steep discount to that trading on other local crypto exchanges like CoinCDX, etc. This shows that low trading volumes and liquidity crunch are affecting existing investors.

Over the last weekend, the Indian crypto exchange also faced a large number of phishing attacks with hackers to take advantage of the security vulnerability. Sumit Gupta, CEO of CoinDCX, issued a stark warning to the crypto community regarding fake compensation emails that falsely claim to be from WazirX. These fraudulent emails mimic official communications but are designed to trick users into revealing sensitive information or clicking on malicious links.

Also Read: How the WazirX Hack Affects Crypto Market Prices