WazirX Hacker ready to vanish with 2000 crores of user funds

The hackers responsible for the massive breach of Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX in July are reportedly close to laundering the stolen funds, estimated to be worth over ₹2,000 crore. Once all the funds are laundered the chances of recovering funds back will reduce greatly. 

The hackers have continuously transferred the stolen funds in batches to a new address and then to the well known crypto mixer tornado cash. At present wallet holding funds stolen from WazirX, is down to only $6 million worth of ether (ETH).

Blockchain data from Arkham, show a clear timeline of how hackers transferred over 400 crore (approx $50 million) worth of tokens in August and the remaining amount in September.

The stolen funds accounted for over 45% of the total reserves cited by the exchange in a June 2024 report. The exchange has since filed for a restructuring process in Singapore to clear its liabilities.

Amidst this, Binance, which has had a contentious relationship with WazirX, asserts  that it should not be involved in this case emphasizing that it does not control or operate WazirX. Binance even responded to a user claiming 83 cr from them with “Not Our Circus, Not Our Monkeys” 

That differs from what founder Nischal Shetty stated on X in August. Who will pay wazirx users is still a 2000 cr question.