Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has warned that his company could “disable Wazirx wallets on a tech level,” advising anyone with funds on the Indian crypto exchange to transfer them to Binance. The warning followed numerous tweets by CZ and Wazirx’s founder regarding whether Binance acquired Wazirx.
Binance Alert: Transfer Your Funds
The conflict between global crypto exchange Binance and Indian crypto exchange Wazirx has deepened. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) tweeted on Friday, advising anyone holding funds on Wazirx to move to Binance. He warned: “We may disable Wazirx Wallet on a technical level.”
The dispute between Binance and Wazirx began when India’s Directorate of Enforcement (ED) froze the bank assets of Wazirx as part of its money laundering investigation.
Following the ED announcement, the Binance CEO immediately denied that his company had acquired Wazirx — nearly three years after the two exchanges announced the acquisition.
While Zhao claimed that the acquisition of Wazirx “was never completed,” Wazirx founder Nischal Shetty disagreed and maintained that his exchange was indeed acquired by Binance.
Binance Vs Wazirx: Who Owns What
Attempting to prove that Binance owns Wazirx, Shetty tweeted that Binance owns the domain name of Wazirx, has root access to its Amazon AWS web hosting servers, has all crypto assets, and receives all crypto profits. Huh.
However, CZ argued: “The Wazirx founding team maintained control of the operations of the platform. We (Binance) were never given data or control of users, KYC, etc.” Responding to Shetty’s tweet about Binance owning Wazirx, Zhao stressed:
We do not have control of the trading system. You’ve just given an AWS login, no source code, no deployment capability. You also retained access to the AWS account, source code, deployment, etc.
In a follow-up tweet, CZ claimed that Wazirx has been uncooperative with Binance, adding that the exchange appears to be uncooperative with the ED as well.
Regarding the ED’s investigation, Shetty tweeted that Zanmai Labs, a Wazirx-owned entity, “has been cooperating with the ED for over 7 days and has submitted all necessary data.” Wazirx also tweeted:
We have been fully cooperating with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for several days and have responded to all their queries fully and transparently. We do not agree with the allegations in the ED press release. We are evaluating our further plan of action.
