WazirX

Who WazirX fits

WazirX launched in 2018 and grew into India’s largest crypto exchange by registered users, built around direct INR deposit and withdrawal rails at a time when Indian banking access to crypto exchanges was, and often still is, genuinely difficult to arrange. That’s the context worth holding onto going into the rest of this review, because the more recent chapter of WazirX’s story is a serious one: on July 18, 2024, the exchange lost roughly $235 million, widely reported in the $230 to $235 million range, to a hack later attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, one of the largest exchange hacks ever recorded. WazirX spent over a year in a Singapore court-supervised restructuring process before resuming full operations, including INR trading, in October 2025. If you’re evaluating WazirX today, that restructuring and its still-incomplete recovery isn’t a footnote; it’s the central fact to weigh against everything else on this page.

With that context set, WazirX fits Indian retail users who want the deepest available INR liquidity, have already priced in the hack’s aftermath and the exchange’s ongoing recovery process, and are comfortable with a platform whose founding ownership history is still being fought out in litigation. It’s a poor fit for anyone outside India, anyone unwilling to hold funds on an exchange that suffered a breach this large and this recent, and anyone who wants a clean, unambiguous corporate ownership story.

Security and custody

The July 2024 hack is the defining event in WazirX’s history, and it’s worth being precise about what happened. Attackers compromised WazirX’s multisig wallet setup, reportedly by manipulating the signing interface used by the exchange’s co-custodian, and drained roughly $235 million across a range of tokens, wiping out close to half of WazirX’s reported reserves at the time. WazirX froze trading and pursued a formal debt restructuring under Singapore law, through a related entity, rather than an ad hoc reimbursement plan.

That restructuring plan won creditor approval, over 95% of voting creditors representing more than 94% of claims, and Singapore’s High Court approved it in October 2025. In practice, that meant WazirX resumed deposits, withdrawals, trading, and P2P services that same month, and by late 2025 had returned roughly 85% of approved claim value to users. The remaining share has been issued as Recovery Tokens rather than real assets: as of early 2026 those tokens are non-tradable and non-withdrawable, meaning a meaningful slice of affected users’ holdings are still, in practical terms, frozen. Only a small share of the stolen funds, commonly cited around 12 to 15%, has actually been traced or frozen; most moved through Tornado Cash and other mixing services and is unlikely to ever be fully recovered. Read that plainly: WazirX users were made largely, but not entirely, whole, and the mechanism, Recovery Tokens rather than direct crypto or cash, is a genuinely different outcome than what better-handled exchange hacks, like KuCoin’s 2020 incident, produced. It’s worth reading Wallets and Custody Explained alongside this review, since the underlying lesson, that exchange custody is never a guarantee, applies no matter which platform you use.

Deposits and withdrawals

INR deposits and withdrawals are WazirX’s core value proposition and resumed alongside the rest of the platform in October 2025, using standard Indian bank transfer rails. Crypto deposits and withdrawals process at normal network speed once confirmations clear. As noted above, a portion of users’ actual holdings sit in non-withdrawable Recovery Tokens rather than freely movable assets, so don’t assume your full pre-hack balance is available to withdraw without checking your specific claim status first.

Fees

WazirX runs two parallel fee models. The standard pay-per-trade schedule sits at 0.2% maker and 0.2% taker on spot, adjusted by 30-day volume and WRX token holdings, roughly in line with the historically standard rate before fee-free competitors pushed prices down industry-wide. Alongside that, WazirX introduced a flat-fee subscription called WazirX ZERO, a fixed monthly charge for unlimited trading with no per-trade cost. Separately, WazirX’s INR-settled perpetual futures product, launched in May 2026, carries its own schedule, reported around 0.02% maker and 0.04% taker. Given how much WazirX has changed its pricing structure recently, verify the live rate and whether a subscription plan makes sense for your volume before assuming either number applies.

WazirX’s product lineup

Spot trading covers close to 300 tokens, a wide selection for an India-focused exchange and WazirX’s core product. Margin trading is available on eligible pairs; see Margin Trading: Isolated vs. Cross for how that works generally. WazirX P2P offers commission-free peer-to-peer trading directly on INR rails, a useful option during periods when direct bank deposits face friction. The newest addition is INR-settled perpetual futures, launched in May 2026 as part of WazirX’s post-restructuring push to rebuild trading volume; it’s new enough that its liquidity and reliability track record is still being established, unlike the exchange’s much longer-running spot market.

Regulatory footprint

WazirX is registered with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND) as a Virtual Digital Asset Service Provider, the same formal reporting category as other major Indian exchanges. That registration didn’t prevent the 2024 hack and doesn’t itself guarantee fund security; it’s a reporting and compliance status, not a safety certification. Separately, WazirX and its founders have faced Enforcement Directorate scrutiny in India, including a show-cause notice tied to alleged foreign exchange law violations connected to a broader money-laundering investigation into unrelated betting platforms; that matter is distinct from the hack and remains unresolved. See Crypto Regulation in India for the broader tax and compliance picture, since a flat 30% tax on gains and 1% TDS on transactions apply regardless of which domestic exchange you use.

The other unresolved thread is WazirX’s relationship with Binance. Binance announced what it called an acquisition of WazirX in November 2019; by 2022 Binance was describing that deal as a purchase of certain assets and intellectual property rather than equity ownership, while WazirX’s founders have maintained the opposite position. That disagreement escalated sharply during the 2024 hack crisis, when Binance publicly denied any ownership stake or operational responsibility for WazirX at the exact moment users were asking who was accountable for their frozen funds. As of this review, the dispute has moved into formal litigation with no resolution, and both sides continue to give contradictory accounts of who actually owned and controlled the exchange. Treat any claim about WazirX’s ownership structure, including WazirX’s own, as contested rather than settled.

Customer support

Support channels, in-app chat and a ticketing system, are available in English and Hindi, and routine account questions are generally handled without much friction. The harder test has been the hack and restructuring period itself, where users needed clear, timely communication about frozen funds, claim status, and Recovery Token mechanics; WazirX has published regular updates through its blog and support channels, though the pace and clarity of that communication has drawn criticism from affected users, a common pattern during any exchange’s crisis response. If you’re specifically trying to track a claim from the 2024 hack, expect to need patience and to check official channels directly rather than relying on secondhand summaries, including this one.

Who should look elsewhere

If a recent, large-scale hack with an incomplete recovery is more risk than you’re willing to accept, that’s a completely reasonable line to draw, and there’s no way around July 2024 being the most consequential fact in this review. If you’re outside India, WazirX isn’t built for you anyway; an internationally focused exchange like Binance or Kraken will serve you better, and the comparison tool is worth using to weigh options side by side. And if a clear, undisputed ownership and governance structure matters to you, WazirX’s unresolved Binance dispute is a genuine gap that more established exchanges don’t carry. It’s also worth reading Common Crypto Scams alongside any review of an exchange in this position, since the confusion around WazirX’s ownership and recovery process has itself been exploited by scammers running fake “claim your recovery tokens” schemes aimed at affected users.