WazirX

Is WazirX safe?

WazirX has the weakest record of the large Indian exchanges. In July 2024 it lost more than $230 million from a single wallet, a large share of what it held for customers. Accounts stayed frozen for 15 months while a Singapore court process ran, and users then got back about 85% of their balances, measured at January 2025 prices, with the remainder tied to recovery tokens that may or may not pay out.

We score WazirX 31/100, below offshore exchanges such as Bitfinex and HTX, which both covered their customers after hacks. The platform reopened in October 2025 with better custody, but the record still counts.

What happened in the July 2024 hack

On 18 July 2024 attackers drained one of WazirX's multisigMultisigA crypto wallet that needs approval from several keys to move funds, for example any 2 of 3, rather than from a single key.More in the glossary wallets. The wallet had six signers: five WazirX staff using Ledger hardware walletsHardware walletA small dedicated device that stores crypto private keys offline and signs transactions inside the device, so the keys never touch your computer.More in the glossary and one at Liminal, the custody provider that ran the wallet interface. According to WazirX's preliminary report, the transaction the signers saw on the interface did not match what they actually signed. The approved payload handed control of the wallet to the attacker.

WazirX says the FBI traced the attack to North Korea's Lazarus group. Only about $3 million in USDT of the stolen funds had been frozen by mid-2025.

The decision that hurt users most came after the theft. Instead of covering the loss from company funds, which WazirX did not have on that scale, it spread the loss across all customers, including those who held coins that were never stolen. Trades made after the hack were reversed, and withdrawals stopped.

How the Singapore scheme paid users back

Zettai Pte Ltd, the Singapore company linked to WazirX, asked the Singapore High Court for a moratorium and proposed a scheme of arrangement. The timeline:

Date	Step
Jan 2025	Court orders independent check; Alvarez & Marsal verify $478.5m of liquid assets
Mar 2025	93.1% of voting creditors back the first scheme
Jun 2025	Court refuses it; Zettai had not disclosed a Panama entity
Aug 2025	Revote: 95.7% of about 149,000 voters, 94.6% by value
13 Oct 2025	Court sanctions the amended scheme with changes
24 Oct 2025	Trading restarts

The first distribution paid users in tokens, not rupees, worth about 85.25% of their claims at 17 January 2025 prices. Everyone also got recovery tokens. WazirX plans to buy these back over about three years using recovered stolen assets, illiquid holdings and a share of profits. Those later payments depend on the platform doing well, so treat them as uncertain. WazirX said in July 2026 that it had finished issuing the recovery tokens; we found no announcement of a buyback or payout on them by October 2026.

Who runs WazirX, and who regulates it?

Two companies matter. Zanmai Labs Pvt Ltd in Mumbai handles rupee trading and is the entity registered with India's Financial Intelligence UnitFinancial intelligence unitA national government agency that receives reports of suspicious transactions from banks and crypto firms and analyses them for money laundering.More in the glossary (FIU-IND). Zettai Pte Ltd in Singapore ran the crypto side and carried the restructuring. Binance announced it had bought WazirX in 2019, then said in 2022 that it never owned Zanmai Labs. That ownership dispute has never been settled in public.

FIU registration is an anti-money-launderingAnti-money launderingThe rules and checks that stop criminals from moving illegal money through banks, payment firms and crypto exchanges.More in the glossary duty, not a licence. India has no rules for how exchanges must hold client coins, no capital requirement and no compensation scheme. Compared with CoinDCX, which absorbed its own 2025 hack, WazirX works under the same thin rules but with a far weaker record.

India's Enforcement Directorate has also looked at WazirX. In June 2021 it sent a notice under foreign-exchange law over about Rs 2,790 crore of transactions linked to a betting-app probe. In August 2022 it froze Rs 64.67 crore of bank balances, released about a month later after WazirX supplied records.

What changed after the restart

WazirX now keeps assets with BitGo Trust, a US custodian that also handles distributions for Mt. Gox and FTX creditors. That is a real improvement on the 2024 setup, and in the first half of 2026 WazirX added Fireblocks wallet technology alongside it. It has not published a new proof of reservesProof of reservesA report in which a crypto exchange shows that it holds enough coins to cover all customer balances, ideally checked by an outside firm.More in the glossary since the restart that we could find; the last one on its blog covers October 2024. It also launched leveraged futures trading in 2026, which carries liquidation risk on top of exchange risk. It does not change the legal position: if WazirX lost customer coins again, there is still no Indian law that ring-fences them or pays you back.

How to use WazirX more carefully

1. Keep only what you are trading on the exchange and move long-term coins to your own wallet.
2. Do not count recovery tokens as money in hand; the payout depends on future recoveries and profits.
3. Turn on an authenticator app and a withdrawal address allowlist.
4. Keep records of your pre-hack balances and distributions for tax, since India taxes crypto gains at 30% plus 1% TDS on transfers.

How we scored it

Security history (20) is the weakest factor: a loss of more than $230 million that customers had to share, after a 15-month freeze. Reserves (40) and legal record (40) are the strongest, thanks to the court-ordered asset check and the absence of any final penalty. Licensing (30) reflects India's registration-only regime.