A little back history: WazirX was one of the 3 largest crypto exchanges in India for many years, and its owner (Nichal Shetty) did way more than anyone else to promote crypto usage in India for 5+ years now. He spent 1000+ days on twitter trying to prove to regulators how useful crypto is. He also created a "Peer to peer" exchange (which means customers bought from each other but it was centralized on his subdomain) that naturally had very little KYC oversight.

3 years ago, CZ swooped in & bought WazirX, posting lots of press releases at the time and the added name recognition of Binance gave WazirX the extra trust it needed to become the largest exchange in India. The jury is still out over Binance owning the "P2P" exchange, which is probably the part the regulators are pissed off at.

Yesterday, India's version of FinCEN, the ED, raided WazirX and froze all bank accounts, totaling over $8m dollars worth of customer funds. They're accusing WazirX of money laundering, mainly because they don't use proper KYC & AML practices. They sound really pissed off in their enforcement documents, - sounds like jailtime is coming for someone like Shetty.

But what the Indian crypto community is talking about today is CZ's tweets, claiming that the purchase of WazirX, 3 years ago, was never completed! He's trying to distance himself from this as much as possible even though he owns the domain WazirX and admits he could turn it off at any moment. CZ claims that he 'never received the shares' from Shetty and therefore the deal's not done.

Of course we can't know if there were any shares involved, but it's clear that Binance controls the company. Shetty's posted a lot in response, and says that the deal was for Binance to receive all fees from crypto-to-crypto trading while WazirX receives all fees from Crypto-to-Rupee trading.

Meanwhile, the ED doesn't seem to care if Binance is involved at all. They've named one of WazirX's directors (not Shetty) as the guy who 'controls the database.'

What a clusterf*ck. Indians don't know if their favorite exchange will ever come online again or if their $8m is lost forever. They were already taxed at 30% on every last crypto transaction, with no loss-related tax breaks allowed! Now this lack of trust is likely going to destroy the whole crypto exchange industry in India for years.

I know Shetty's a shitcoin slinger but man, that's harsh. He may wind up in prison after begging regulators for 1000+ days in a row to regulate his business.

Here's a tweet breakdown thread: https://twitter.com/Trader_MNJ/status/1555624418210357249