Binance and WazirX contradicted each other over who controlled the Indian exchange

On August 6, 2022, Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao and WazirX co-founder Nischal Shetty publicly contradicted each other over whether Binance owned or controlled the Indian cryptocurrency exchange. The dispute widened one day after India’s Directorate of Enforcement announced that it had frozen ₹64.67 crore in bank balances associated with Zanmai Labs, the company the agency identified as owning WazirX.

The disagreement mattered beyond corporate semantics. Users, investigators and business partners needed to know which entity controlled WazirX’s technology, cryptocurrency custody, customer verification and regulatory response. Instead, the two organizations presented incompatible descriptions of an acquisition that both had publicly celebrated in November 2019.

Two accounts of one transaction

Binance’s original November 21, 2019 announcement said it had acquired WazirX. WazirX published its own announcement describing itself as successfully acquired by Binance. Both records presented the transaction as completed, and both attributed statements to executives describing the companies’ combined plans for Indian fiat-to-cryptocurrency access.

By August 5, 2022, Binance had added a clarification to its announcement. It said the transaction was limited to an agreement to purchase certain WazirX assets and intellectual property, that Binance had not bought equity in Zanmai Labs, and that Zanmai continued to operate and manage WazirX.

The disagreement became more explicit on August 6. Zhao said Binance did not control WazirX’s trading system and accused the Indian platform of retaining access to its infrastructure and source code. Shetty maintained that the deal involved a Binance parent entity and argued that Binance controlled important parts of the WazirX operation. These were competing company claims, not findings adjudicated by a court or regulator on August 6.

Enforcement action supplied the immediate pressure

The ownership dispute followed the Directorate of Enforcement’s August 5 press release concerning an investigation into alleged laundering of proceeds connected to instant-loan applications. The agency said it had searched a Zanmai Labs director and frozen bank balances totaling ₹64.67 crore.

The agency also alleged that Zanmai had created a web of agreements involving multiple entities that obscured ownership of the exchange. It described the answers received during its investigation as contradictory and ambiguous. Those statements were allegations by an investigating authority; the August 5 release did not constitute a criminal conviction or final judicial determination against WazirX, Zanmai Labs, Binance or their executives.

The ₹64.67 crore figure referred to bank balances covered by the agency’s freezing order. It should not be described as the value of cryptocurrency seized, proven laundering proceeds, customer losses or a penalty. The record available on August 6 also did not establish that ordinary customer cryptocurrency balances had been frozen.

Why control mattered

Centralized exchanges concentrate responsibilities that decentralized protocols distribute across software and network participants. Corporate control can determine who holds wallet credentials, administers cloud infrastructure, performs know-your-customer checks, answers law-enforcement requests and bears contractual obligations to users.

The Binance-WazirX disagreement showed how public acquisition language could become materially uncertain when responsibility was tested. An announcement that appeared straightforward in 2019 no longer gave customers or regulators a shared answer about ownership in August 2022.

That uncertainty was the central development on August 6—not a demonstrated failure of WazirX customer balances and not proof of the enforcement allegations. The unresolved questions were which assets the 2019 agreement covered, whether the transaction had legally closed, and how operational control was divided among Binance, Zanmai Labs and other entities. The surviving contemporaneous record established a public contradiction, but it did not resolve those questions.