On November 28, cryptocurrency exchange WazirX announced that between April 2022 and September 2022, it blocked over 700 accounts on its site. The majority of these were stopped due to forgery, fraud, deceit, and unlawful fund transfers using cryptocurrencies.
The exchange’s third edition transparency report, which was released at the same time as the collapse of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange FTX, included information about the suspended accounts.
Over the course of this time, WazirX got 828 questions from Indian and foreign law enforcement agencies across 10 million transactions (LEAs). In contrast to the 64 requests made by foreign LEAs, 764 of these were made by Indian LEAs.
The exchange has reportedly been collaborating with LEAs to aid them in their investigations into alleged unlawful transactions that may have been carried out on WazirX’s platform. Ponzi schemes and social engineering scams accounted for over 40% of all scams, impersonation scams for 37%, phishing/airdrop scams for 21%, and other scams for 4.2 percent.
Only 4-5 percent of cases, according to statistics, are actually related to blockchain and VDA frauds, which the company promised to address with better monitoring tools. Additionally, a clear regulatory framework could aid in more accurate detection and resolution, according to the report.
The CEO and Founder of WazirX, Nischal Shetty, stated, they still have a ways to go to prevent security vulnerabilities in Crypto. It is necessary to raise awareness about cryptocurrency’s negative applications as well. Only then, in a setting of trust, can widespread adoption occur. They will continue to work with regulators to guarantee that any type of fraud involving virtual digital assets is stopped while also educating Indians about cryptocurrency.
WazirX had blocked roughly 14,500 and 17,000 accounts in its most recent two reports, respectively. This time, the study stated that in the previous six months, LEAs only looked into 0.008% of all transactions.
WazirX had a run-in with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in August of this year, when the ED searched its premises and froze bank assets worth Rs. 64.67 crores. This sparked a public feud between Shetty and Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao, who claimed that Binance never controlled the Indian exchange.
