The archive · Money & Fintech · Technical decision · 2018–2025
WazirX's India crypto bet hits a $230M hack: trading suspended 16 months, restarts in 2025
India's largest crypto exchange lost $230M in a July 2024 multisig exploit, freezing the platform for 16 months.
WazirX
What the business is
WazirX was India's largest cryptocurrency exchange, letting users buy, sell and store crypto with rupee deposits.
Starting capital：Founded bootstrapped in 2018; acquired by Binance in 2019, then re-separated in 2022.
How it started
Founder Nischal Shetty launched WazirX in 2018 to give Indian users a rupee-friendly way into crypto. By 2024 it was India's largest exchange, reporting about $500 million in reserves in June 2024.
What happened
On 18 July 2024, an attacker upgraded WazirX's Safe multisig wallet on Ethereum to a malicious contract and drained over $230 million — roughly 45% of its stated reserves. WazirX paused INR and crypto withdrawals, and suspended trading. Security firm Elliptic linked the attack to North Korea's Lazarus Group. Withdrawals stayed frozen while WazirX, through Singapore parent Zettai, went into a court-supervised restructuring.
How it ended up
In October 2025, the Singapore High Court approved a revised restructuring plan backed by 95.7% of participating creditors, and WazirX resumed trading on 24 October after 16 months offline.
Background
WazirX launched in 2018 as a rupee-friendly crypto exchange for India, and by mid-2024 it was the country's largest, telling users it held about $500 million in reserves. The company's whole pitch was trust: a regulated-looking, easy on-ramp for a market global exchanges avoided.
That trust broke on 18 July 2024. A hacker upgraded WazirX's Ethereum Safe multisig wallet to a malicious contract and moved out more than $230 million of assets, an amount BusinessLine estimated at roughly 45% of the reserves WazirX had disclosed in June. The exchange froze withdrawals, then suspended trading entirely as security firms pointed to North Korea's Lazarus Group.
The freeze lasted 16 months. WazirX's Singapore parent Zettai sought a moratorium and a creditor restructuring; a revised plan won approval from 95.7% of participating creditors and the Singapore High Court in October 2025. Trading restarted on 24 October 2025, but users' balances were restored only through the restructuring, not through recovery of the stolen assets.
What has to be true
- Centralizing custody made one wallet a single point of failure for the whole exchange.
- Growth at any cost — millions of users, $500M reserves — outpaced the security controls around those reserves.
- The 2022 split from Binance left WazirX to run custody and ops on its own, with no safety net when things broke.
- A court-supervised restructuring, not insurance or recovered funds, was what let it restart.
What can be applied
When one custody wallet holds nearly half of customer funds, a single compromised key can take down the whole company; exchange founders price 'security' as an operating cost, not a feature.
Aftermath
As of September 2026 WazirX is back online and trading again in phases, after creditors approved the restructuring. It returned as a much smaller platform: the 2024 hack cost users roughly $230M and the brand a year-plus of trust, while India's crypto market itself remained under heavy regulatory pressure.
Sources
- Indian crypto exchange WazirX exploited for over $230 million
- India’s largest crypto exchange WazirX reports security breach
- WazirX to resume trading on Friday, ending 16-month suspension from hack
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