Binance Tells WazirX to Withdraw Customer Assets Held in its Wallets-Is it an End of the Collaboration?

The dreadful days for the Indian crypto community have not vested following the ignorance of digital assets in the recent announcement of Budget 2023. The power cash between the two titans began a few months before, which now appears to have reached its destiny of closure.

Binance, the top crypto exchange has asked told WazirX, its ex-Indian counterpart to withdraw customer funds held on their platform. 

Has the Collaboration Ended? Are the Customer’s Funds Safe?

All it started when Enforcement Directorate (ED) booked WazirX under FEMA Act and the Binance CEO CZ, passed a shocking comment that ‘Binance never acquired WazirX’. As per the new update, the deal appears to have ended between them as Binance has invited Zanmai Labs to out arrangements to withdraw all the remaining assets as updated in its official blog post. 

Binance in the post stated that it just provided a wallet facility to Zanmai Labs (The entity operating WazirX) which has been terminated. The Zanmai labs are yet to withdraw all their assets held on Binance wallets used for WazirX’s operations. The platform also asked the crypto community to DYOR (Do your own Research) before storing their assets on any platform, while the Binance users remain unaffected. 

The platform further writes that Zanmai Labs were supporting a false narrative on Binance’s roles and responsibilities for operating WazirX in India. Therefore, Binance offered Zanmai 2 choices on 26 January 2023. According to this, either Zanmai Labs clarifies and retrace false public statements and continues to use the wallet service, or else terminates the services completely. 

Further, Binance has given a deadline of 03 February 2023, 23:59 UTC to remove all the funds which appear to be in progress. The platform also made it clear that it does not have any control over Zanmai’s management of WazirX’s customer funds.

However, the bitter ending does not appear to be a good start for cryptos in India for 2023 as neither of the founders continues to maintain their silence on this development.