WazirX Holds 92 Percent of Total $285 million Reserves in Binance Wallets

WazirX claims to be serving over 15 million customers.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by Richa Sharma | Updated: 11 January 2023 18:06 IST

WazirX Holds 92 Percent of Total $285 million Reserves in Binance Wallets

Photo Credit: Facebook/ WazirX

WazirX was founded five years ago in the year 2017

Highlights

WazirX holds most of its reserves in the USDT currency
WazirX holds $26.45 million in wallets hosted by other exchanges
Binance, KuCoin have also conducted audits of their reserves

WazirX has announced this week that it holds $285 million (roughly Rs. 2,320 crore) in its reserves. The exchange, which claims to be serving over 15 million customers, has conducted an audit of its reserves to ensure that it could handle bulk withdrawals in case of an emergency without having to shut down its business. Of the total user assets, around 92 percent are held on Binance wallets. This makes for $259.07 million (roughly Rs. 2,120 crore).

The exchange founded in 2017 has highlighted to its existing and potential customers that its reserves-to-liabilities ratio stood at ‘more than 1:1'. This essentially indicates that WazirX is not at risk of coming face-to-face with a liquidity crunch situation like FTX.

The audit also revealed interesting highlights, giving a glimpse into the current state of India's crypto culture.

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Shiba Inu, Bitcoin, and Ethereum emerged as the top cryptocurrencies that comprise WaizirX's holdings by total value and percentage.

Dogecoin and Polygon also secured decent rankings on list.

Indians are seemingly betting big on memecoins DOGE and SHIB.

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In December 2022, the exchange had said that over 27 percent of first-time crypto buyers on its platform purchased Shiba Inu tokens. DOGE trading, on the other hand, swelled by 3000 percent as soon as Teslachief Elon Musk finalised Twitter takeover.

CoinGabbar, a third-party platform that tracks crypto assets, published WazirX's proof-of-reserve.

“It is not meant to be an exhaustive, complete or comprehensive statement of the actual assets or reserves held by the exchange on behalf of its users or customers,” the post by CoinGabbar noted.

WazirX holds $26.45 million (roughly Rs. 220 crore) worth of reserves, making up for eight percent of the total, in wallets hosted by other exchanges.

KuCoin, Binance, CryptoCom, and Giottus also conducted verifications of their financial statuses.

In the last week of December 2022, officials from US' Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a warning to crypto investors that they must not blindly trust the internal audits of crypto firms.

“Having such a report is not enough information for an investor to assess whether the company has sufficient assets to cover its liabilities,” media reports quoted Paul Munter, the acting chief accountant of the SEC, as saying at the time.

Will crypto tax hurt the industry in India? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, WazirX, Binance, Proof of Reserve

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More