WazirX and Binance clash over ownership in a war of words

Fear of WazirX shutting down surfaces among users as ED freezes the bank account of its parent company

By Shashank Bhardwaj

Image: Shutterstock

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao claimed on his official Twitter handle that WazirX has been uncooperative with them and they did not own any equity in Zanmai Labs after news of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) probing WazirX surfaced. Zanmai Labs is the parent company of WazriX. This tweet started a war between the two CEOs regarding which party holds the controlling stake in WazirX. With millions of dollars worth of crypto investment hanging around by word of mouth from the two CEOs, the battle seems to be getting intense. WazirX CEO was quick to respond to the tweet by Binance CEO.

"After some media reports on Binance structure, we asked about it. We were given an ambiguous answer that the parent entity is under restructuring. It's been many months, still waiting for Binance Parent entity… Can Binance name Parent entity?" stated the tweet by Nischal Shetty, WazirX CEO.

According to Shetty, the sale of WazirX technology was a part of the deal with Binance. Zanmai Labs licensed the technology for the INR market. Now Binance has control over the crypto trading parts like crypto-crypto trading, crypto deposit and withdrawal, while Zanmai has the controlling power over INR-crypto trading, INR deposit and withdrawal.

Singapore-based Zettai Pte Ltd currently holds a 99.99 percent stake in the company and is controlled by the founders Nischal Shetty, Siddharth Menon and Sameer Mhatre. CEO Nischal Shetty holds the remaining 0.01 percent stake.

The chaos started with India's Enforcement Directorate (ED) finding Rs. 64.67 crores on the premises of the directors of Zanmai Labs. According to the Indian agency, WazirX was 'actively' involved in helping out 16 other fintech companies under investigation for using the crypto route for money laundering. Amid this, Binance's CEO claimed to have not been given control by WazirX even after the deal was made. Their data and stats were not made accessible to Binance, and he said that he wanted to shut down WazirX but wouldn't as 10 million users have invested their money through the platform. He also included in his tweets that he would love to cooperate with ED to ensure smoothness in operations and fix the issues at WazirX.

The writer is the founder at yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist. Twitter: @bhardwajshash

Crypto wallet users are warned as scammers might get active during the potential Ethereum hard fork