Indian cryptocurrency platform CoinDCX faced a major security breach on July 19 at 4 a.m. IST, leading to a loss of ₹378 crore (approximately $44.2 million). The hack targeted an internal operational account used for liquidity management on a partner exchange. However, the company has clarified that user assets are completely secure and have not been affected.
Company Takes Full Financial Responsibility
According to a First Information Report (FIR) released on Sunday, CoinDCX stated that the entire loss would be covered by the company’s own treasury funds, and no burden will fall on its users.
Co-founders Sumit Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal took to X (formerly Twitter) to explain the incident. Gupta said, “Today, one of our internal operational accounts – used only for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange – was compromised due to a sophisticated server breach. I confirm that the CoinDCX wallets used to store customer assets are not impacted and are completely safe. This won’t cause any loss to our customers. CoinDCX will be bearing the full amount.”
Khandelwal confirmed the extent of the damage, posting, “The total amount lost was ₹378 crore ($44 million) out of our treasury assets. CoinDCX Treasury will be bearing these losses.”
ZachXBT First Detected the Breach
The breach came to light after blockchain detective ZachXBT flagged unusual activity. Following his post, CoinDCX publicly acknowledged the incident. However, the 17-hour delay in disclosure drew some criticism online, despite praise for how the company handled the crisis.
Panic Withdrawals and Temporary Glitch
Once the news broke, a wave of withdrawal requests flooded the platform. This caused technical delays—specifically, the portfolio APIs (which display user balances and transaction history) stopped working temporarily. Many users were left unable to view their holdings, creating widespread concern.
The company later said that the issue was fixed and normal services have resumed. All trading operations, INR deposits, and withdrawals are back on track. As per their update:
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Withdrawals below ₹5 lakh will be processed within 5 hours.
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Withdrawals above ₹5 lakh will be cleared within 72 hours.
Forensic Probe Underway
CoinDCX has informed the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and launched an investigation in collaboration with two global cybersecurity firms. The company has also promised to make the results of the forensic audit public.
Industry-Wide Concerns Rise
This incident follows a much bigger attack earlier in 2024, when WazirX, another Indian crypto exchange, lost over ₹1,965 crore ($230 million)—India’s largest crypto hack so far.
