WazirX suspends its NFTs platform services

Indian crypto exchange WazirX suspended its NFTs trade platform without any clear reason.

WazirX is a popular Indian crypto exchange. The popularity of the exchange was at a peak in 2020 & 2021 because top ranked Binance exchange acquired this exchange as an Indian subsidiary but in 2022 a controversy started between the CEOs of both of these two exchanges over the real ownership & control on the WazirX exchange. 

On 22 Feb 2023, the WazirX exchange published a blog post and confirmed that the exchange terminated its NFTs trade platform but at the same time, they confirmed that people can still trade their NFTs on the OpenSea NFTs marketplace easily.

Exchange failed to disclose any proper reason behind this decision but they noted that they failed to grab a better amount of users on the platform.

“We are proud to have launched India’s first NFT Marketplace in June 2021, which showcased the work of many creators. Unfortunately, it did not gain much traction,” the announcement read.

A few media reports claimed that there might be some possible regulatory hurdles with this exchange from the Indian regulatory bodies but so far to this date nothing is clear. 

Binance vs WazirX

In late 2022, the WazirX exchange faced an Enforcement action from the Indian Anti Money laundering body ED over the allegations of money laundering activities via the WazirX exchange. Later that matter was solved smoothly in favor of this exchange.

After the ED’s action on the WazirX exchange, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said that WazirX never cooperated with Binance & probably they failed to cooperate with the enforcement agencies over the money laundering case. 

Binance CEO claimed that WazirX failed to hand over the exchange’s full control to the Binance team. WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty claimed that Binance holds the majority of the WazirX exchange’ controls like AWS login id, and domain control but Binance CEO again strict back & said that WazirX still holds user KYC verification system & users data. 

After the whole controversy, Binance & WazirX terminated their partnership.

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