Kevin Helms
A student of Austrian economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open source systems, network effects and the intersection of finance and cryptography.
Binance CEO Warns ‘We May Disable Wazirx Wallets’ – Advises Investors To Transfer Funds To Binance – Exchange Bitcoin News
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has warned that his company may “deactivate Wazirx wallets on a technical level” and advises anyone with funds on the Indian crypto exchange to transfer them to Binance. The warning followed numerous tweets from CZ and Wazirx’s founder about whether Binance was buying Wazirx.
Binance’s warning: Transfer your money
The conflict between the global crypto exchange Binance and the Indian crypto exchange Wazirx has deepened. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) tweeted on Friday, advising anyone with funds on Wazirx to transfer them to Binance. He warned: “We can disable Wazirx wallets on a technical level.”
The dispute between Binance and Wazirx began when India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) froze the banking assets of Wazirx as part of its money laundering investigation.
Following the ED’s announcement, Binance’s CEO quickly denied that his company had acquired Wazirx — nearly three years after the two exchanges announced the acquisition.
While Zhao claimed that the acquisition of Wazirx was “never completed”, Wazirx founder Nischal Shetty disagreed and maintained that his exchange was actually acquired by Binance.
Binance vs. Wazirx: Who owns what
In an attempt to prove that Binance owns Wazirx, Shetty tweeted that Binance owns Wazirx’s domain name, has root access to Amazon AWS hosting servers, owns all crypto assets and receives all crypto profits.
However, CZ claimed: “The founding team of Wazirx maintained control over the operations of the platform. We (Binance) were never given data or control over users, KYC, etc.” In response to Shetty’s tweet about Binance owning Wazirx, Zhao emphasized:
We do NOT have control over the trading system. You just provided the AWS login, no source code, no distribution capability. You also retained access to your AWS account, source code, distribution, etc.
In a follow-up tweet, CZ claimed that Wazirx has been uncooperative with Binance, adding that the exchange appears to be uncooperative with ED as well.
Regarding the ED’s investigation, Shetty tweeted that Zanmai Labs, the entity that owns Wazirx, “has been cooperating with the ED for over 7 days and has submitted all necessary data.” Wazirx also tweeted:
We have cooperated fully with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for several days and have responded to all their inquiries fully and transparently. We do not agree with the claims in the ED press release. We are evaluating our further action plan.
What do you think really happened between Binance and Wazirx? Let us know in the comments section below.
Image credit: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons
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