According to a blog post on Friday, Binance has requested Zanmai Labs, the company running the Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX, to negotiate terms for withdrawing any remaining funds stored in Binance wallets.
The answer purports to allay concerns about what would happen to customer funds if Binance and WazirX decided to cancel their partnership.
Binance stated,
“As an exception, we have invited Zanmai to work out arrangements with us to withdraw any remaining assets in the relevant accounts after 3 February. However, the responsibility ultimately lies with the Zanmai team to make the withdrawals expeditiously.”
However, it has been reported that WazirX has not responded yet.
Did Binance Lie About Ownership Disputes At WazirX?
The ownership of WazirX was undisputed in November 2019 after Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, announced that it had acquired the Indian exchange in a blog post. Executives from WazirX openly discussed the acquisition. The narrative began to shift, though, when WazirX got into trouble with the Indian authorities last summer. Indian authorities searched WazirX’s Mumbai office in the first few days of August on the theory that the exchange had assisted 16 fintech companies in money laundering.
Binance moved right away to officially disassociate itself from WazirX. The original announcement of the acquisition on the former’s blog was changed to reflect that the deal was “limited to an agreement to purchase specific assets and intellectual property.” Changpeng Zhao (CZ), CEO of Binance, stated in a tweet on August 5 that the company “does not own any equity in Zanmai Labs, the entity operating WazirX.” A representative for CZ’s firm told the local media that the claims that the CZ-led-firm owned WazirX were “lies.”
The ownership of the Indian exchange was the subject of months of public back and forth between WazirX and Binance, during which the latter maintained that the transaction never actually happened. Officials from WazirX said that it did and that they had proof, however, they never released it.
In the early morning hours of January 26, an Indian national holiday, Binance delivered WazirX a letter stating that the Indian exchange must comply with two conditions by the end of the month or face having its service agreement with WazirX terminated by CZ’s exchange by February 3.
First, CZ’s exchange instructed WazirX to repudiate previous claims that CZ’s exchange controlled WazirX by publishing a pre-written “clarificatory statement” that was provided by CZ’s firm. WazirX was also compelled to remove all references to CZ’s firm from its terms of service.