Binance CEO and WazirX co-founder argue about control over one of India’s biggest crypto exchanges

Following the recent investigation on behalf of India’s Directorate of Enforcement (ED) that alleges cryptocurrency exchange WazirX has taken part in “instant personal loan fraud” by facilitating transactions by unspecified fintech companies suspected in laundering crypto assets abroad, the Indian exchange’s co-founder Nischal Shetty has been part of a heated exchange of words on Twitter with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) over the ownership of the troubled platform.

WazirX, being one of the biggest crypto exchanges in India, has been under a lot of community pressure on its social media channels since the announcement of the investigation. This triggered the Binance CEO to share details from his company’s relationship with the Indian exchange.

Fact: we asked for transferring of WazirX system source code, deployment, operations, as recently as Feb this year. This was refused by WazirX. Binance do NOT have control on their systems.

WazirX has been uncooperative with us, and looks like uncooperative with ED as well.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) August 6, 2022

Sad that these have to be debated on Twitter:

Binance provides wallet services for WazirX.
WazirX domain is transferred to our control.
We were given a shared access to an AWS account.

We could shutdown WazirX. But we can't, because.. 1/2 https://t.co/YoMIgAHC5v
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) August 5, 2022

Apparently, Binance wasn’t provided with WazirX’s system source code, deployment, and operation data. Later, Nischal Shetty tried to disprove Zhao by citing him and interpreting his earlier tweet as stating that Binance has control in WazirX.

People playing deception wording games. We can shut down the domain. It just hurts users. We do NOT have control of the trading system. You just gave the AWS login, no source code, no deployment capability. You also retained access to the AWS account, source code, deploy, etc. https://t.co/Zpp6MYlHtp
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) August 6, 2022

The two have since stopped arguing on Twitter, and the Indian authorities continue their investigation. In the meantime, WazirX has issued a statement that it has been fully cooperating with the Enforcement Directorate and has responded to all queries fully and transparently but doesn’t agree with the allegations by the ED. The exchange also once again reassured its users that “operations are being conducted as usual” and all withdrawals are being processed normally.