Binance distances from WazirX as Indian regulators keep chasing crypto

The Twitter exchange between WazirX co-founder Nischal Shetty and Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao over the ownership of the Indian crypto exchange grabbed a lot of headlines in the first week of August. 

WazirX was reportedly acquired by Binance in 2019, and ever since then, the Indian crypto exchange has been referred to as “Binance-owned”; however, to everyone’s surprise, CZ took to Twitter to claim that the acquisition process never went through and Binance has no ownership in the Indian crypto exchange.

2/ On 21 Nov 2019, Binance published a blog post that it had “acquired” WazirX. This transaction was never completed. Binance has never – at any point – owned any shares of Zanmai Labs, the entity operating WazirX.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) August 5, 2022

CZ said that Binance only provides wallet services for WazirX as a tech solution and WazirX is responsible for all other aspects of the exchange, including user sign-up, Know Your Customer (KYC), trading, and initiating withdrawals.

Shetty countered CZ’s claim in another tweet thread claiming that Binance indeed owns the Indian crypto exchange WazirX and that the parent company, Zanmai Labs, only operates crypto and Indian rupee pairs in WazirX on a Binance license. Binance, on the other hand, operates crypto-to-crypto pairs and processes crypto withdrawals, which can be verified by the companies’ terms of services.

The two co-founders went back and forth for the next couple of days accusing each other of misrepresenting certain facts.

2/ Original deal included sale of WazirX Technology (IP)

Same Technology was then licensed to Zanmai by Binance for INR market

Post licensing:

Binance operates crypto-crypto trading, crypto deposit/withdrawals

Zanmai operates INR-Crypto trading, INR deposit/withdrawal

— Nischal (Shardeum) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) August 6, 2022

Based on the tweet exchange between the two co-founders, it is clear that there was indeed an acquisition deal, to begin with, but Shetty claimed the deal was for the technology transfer and not the whole company, and this is the reason WazirX technology is owned by Binance, while Zanmai Labs operate only crypto/INR pairs using a Binance license.

When Cointelegraph reached out to Binance to get some clarity on the acquisition deal, the exchange denied Shetty’s earlier claims that the exchange operates crypto-to-crypto trading pairs. A spokesperson from Binance told Cointelegraph:

“Binance does not operate crypto-to-crypto trades on the WazirX exchange. The WazirX exchange is wholly run and operated by Zanmai Labs. Further, while we did agree to purchase certain technical assets and intellectual property of WazirX, this agreement was not completed.”

In another tweet, CZ claimed that Binance had tried to pursue the acquisition as late as February but was refused by WazirX. Shetty again responded to the tweet, claiming the deal involved an acquisition by Binance’s parent entity, but at the time of the deal, Binance gave an “ambiguous answer that parent entity is under restructuring.”

The Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph, “The agreement between Binance and Zanmai Labs was for the acquisition of certain assets and intellectual property of WazirX, not equity in Zanmai Labs.” They further added, “We had sought the assets that were supposed to be transferred to us under the agreement, but this was not forthcoming, and the agreement was not (and could not be) completed.”

WazirX, on the other hand, believes the solution to the current problem is either for Binance to buy out India operations using its parent entity instead of a random entity because it may create risk for users or for Binance to sell back WazirX.

Taking three years to disclose the deal never went through

The core reason for the fallout between the two companies seems to be the alleged money laundering investigation by India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED). The said investigation is from a year ago, and contrary to popular…