The notification states that WazirX has until 23:59 UTC on February 3 to withdraw any remaining funds that WazirX has kept in Binance wallets as part of its commitment to cut ties with the Indian exchange.
The saga involving the Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX’s operator Zanmai and the international cryptocurrency exchange Binance continues with a fresh blog post claiming that Binance is forbidding the latter from using its services.
Binance acknowledged the ongoing “public debate” with Zanmai regarding Zanmai’s allegations that Binance was involved in running WazirX in a message published on February 3rd. On January 26, Binance announced that WazirX had been given the choice to either retract its claims and keep utilizing the Binance wallet services, or to stop using them.
Zanmai has until February 3, 2023, 23:59 UTC to withdraw all of its funds from the accounts utilized for WazirX operations, says the announcement, which claims that Zanmai made no retractions. According to Binance, as at the time of writing, Zanmai has money in its wallets that is still being used for business needs.
This comes after WazirX disclosed that 90% of its users’ assets are held in Binance wallets and the remaining 10% are held in cold storage wallets, less than a month after that disclosure. Following the release of proof-of-reserves by numerous cryptocurrency exchanges in the wake of the FTX crisis, the announcement was made.
India’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange is WazirX. Over the past year, though, it has run into trouble with the local authorities. Authorities in India claim that the exchange helped to launder about $130 million in money.
Millions of user dollars were blocked on the exchange at the time of the investigation. At this point, Binance publicly started to distance itself from the Indian exchange. This action was taken in the form of a tweet from Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, in which he made it clear that Binance does not own the exchange.
Immediately following this declaration, Binance sided with Indian local authorities in the WazirX probe and stopped allowing off-chain fund transfers with the exchange.