Hello and Namaste Everyone
Wazirx crypto exchange was hacked on 18th July and it's been over a month. It is one of the biggest crypto exchanges in India covering 40% of the market. This is a big market share in countries like India but the exchange founders are not serious about the business. There have been multiple issues with the community and exchange founders as the team behind the exchange is not transparent. They have not shared the information requested by the community even now, even though the time has been more than a month. They are sharing filtered information and this is what makes the community angry with them.
The community has been requesting them to enable the withdrawals for Crypto and Inr and finally, they have started Inr withdrawals effective today. It sounds good but actually, it is not that good because there is a catch. Below are the points we need to understand related to the crypto withdrawal-
There was some legal action taken by the enforcement directorate and they have seized 34% of their INR holding. This was never informed to the community and even now they have not accepted it officially that some INR funds are on hold as per the government instructions. So even after the withdrawal, users can withdraw just 66% of whatever INR they have in their wallet.
Also they have enabled the withdrawal in parts which means the remaining 66% cannot be withdrawn in one go. One can only withdraw 33% as of now of the entire holding and for the remaining, they will start another phase about this, they have not shared any information as of now.
I have an account with the exchange and I also had some amount there. This amount was very small so I am not worried and even my crypto amount was too small that I can ignore it. I tried to withdraw the available funds in my account and here are what steps I have followed-
I did the login and went to the funds option provided in the account. Where you can also see your crypto and INR holding in different headers.
They have added a message that INR withdrawals are available in phase one where they allow the 66% of the INR balance withdrawal. I clicked on the withdrawal button and below is the window that opens where they are sharing some information related to the instant withdrawal. They are also claiming that the transfer fee has been reduced for the users which is now 10 inr but earlier it was 25 inr.
In the next window I can see my bank account where this money will be transferred and there also I can see the total balance which was available in my account.
They are also providing a breakup for details. I had INR 901 as of 18th July and since they are allowing 33% of withdrawal I am eligible for just 297 INR.
In my case the amount is small but I am worried about the users who have been holding lakhs of rupees in the exchange wallet. This way they have created a lot of issues for those users because 34% are already on hold. We don't know when this money will be available for the withdrawal but if something goes wrong then the government will not release this amount and the loss is coming onto the burdens of exchange users. Another problem is that they have put in some restrictions that only 33% can be withdrawn as of now. If somebody needs more money then the person has to wait for another update when they will enable it unlike in my case you can see the example.
Now I have placed the request for the withdrawal because I don't want to keep any money with them no matter what amount it is. I have lost trust in this exchange and this is also a learning for me but I'm glad that I did not keep any bigger amount on the exchange and even the INR amount I am holding is just about less than $15. Because it is in stand withdrawal I was expecting the credit instantly but that did not happen so I assume that this should be done in a few hours because there would be a lot of requests for the withdrawal for them to process.
All snapshots taken from https://wazirx.com/
Thank you so much
Stay Safe