Indian crypto exchange WazirX succumbed to a $230 million hack in July. The exploit triggered a wave of panic amongst the 16 million users of the platform.
Out of them, around 4.4 million maintained a crypto balance. As of the last week of August, the platform had received more than 9,700 withdrawal-related emails and platform messages, alongside a handful of legal notices.
Now, experts say that the users are unlikely to be made whole. George Gwee, Director at risk advisory firm Kroll, highlighted that customers are bound to lose at least 43% of the funds they had in the exchange.
Chalking out the best-case scenario, he said they’d recover only anywhere between 55% and 57% of their deposits.
The management, however, is looking at more options to be able to return more funds to the users. Chalking out the possible scenarios, Jason Kardachi, the Managing Director of Restructuring at Kroll said,
“There are ongoing discussions through which we hope to generate additional money to be able to return to users. Second way would be if we are capable to recover the stolen crypto and ongoing investigation in relation to that. Thirdly through the platform, if we are able to restructure arrangement with the creditors, we hope to have profits in the future which will be shared with the creditors.”
Meanwhile, Nischal Shetty, the Founder and CEO of the crypto exchange highlighted that they are still in the “negotiation and ideation” stages, and resultantly, he isn’t in a position to say much. He added,
“These are just the current numbers…WazirX is a large platform whose ownership is disputed so we can’t sell it. So we are looking for partnerships.”
WaxirX is in different stages of talks with 11 global crypto exchanges for capital injection and support. It has signed non-disclosure agreements [NDAs] with at least three exchanges.
