Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has warned that his company could “disable Wazirx wallets on a tech level,” advising anyone with funds on the Indian crypto exchange to transfer them to Binance. The warning numerous tweets by CZ and Wazirx’s founder regarding whether Binance acquired Wazirx.

Binance’s Warning: Transfer Your Funds

The conflict between global crypto exchange Binance and Indian crypto exchange Wazirx has deepened. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) tweeted Friday, advising anyone with funds on Wazirx to transfer them to Binance. He warned: “We could disable Wazirx wallets on a tech level.”

The dispute between Binance and Wazirx began when India’s Directorate of Enforcement (ED) froze the bank 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 — almost 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 indeed acquired by Binance.

Binance vs. Wazirx: Who Owns What

Attempting to prove that Binance owns Wazirx, Shetty tweeted that Binance owns Wazirx’s domain name, has root access to its Amazon AWS web hosting servers, has all the crypto assets, and receives all the crypto profits.

However, CZ argued: “The Wazirx founding team maintained control of the operations of the platform. We (Binance) were never given data or control of users, KYC, etc.” Responding to Shetty’s tweet about Binance owning Wazirx, Zhao stressed:

We do NOT have control of the trading system. You just gave the AWS login, no source code, no deployment capability. You also retained access to the AWS account, source code, deploy, etc.

In a follow-up tweet, CZ claimed that Wazirx has been uncooperative with Binance, adding that the exchange appears to be uncooperative with the ED as well.

Regarding the ED’s investigation, Shetty tweeted that Zanmai Labs, the entity that owns Wazirx, “has been cooperating with ED for over 7 days and has submitted all the required data.” Wazirx also tweeted:

We have been fully cooperating with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for several days and have responded to all their queries fully and transparently. We do not agree with the allegations in the ED press release. We are evaluating our further plan of action.

What do you think actually happened between Binance and Wazirx? Let us know in the comments section below.

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 between economics and cryptography.