Understanding the WazirX and Binance Controversy: Key Insights and Clarifications

hello everyone uh so today's episode is about uh wazirex and binance the the ongoing issue between them so

if you are in crypto and especially if you are operating crypto in india then you would have heard this news that

there is some confusion between whether or not binance owns wazir x and there's an enforcement directorate action

against foreign a lot of misreporting that is happening uh fake news that is happening in the

news media especially the indian media as usual about blockchain and internet or blockchain and crypto so we'll just

break it down and we'll try and explain it in the most easiest way and as usual the disclaimer i'm not a financial

advisor or a crypto investment expert and all of these are for learning purposes only most importantly i say

this because a lot of people get scammed do not send your money or your crypto to people who come call themselves as

professional brokers or investment advisors your money you hold it and you invest it

and all of the information that i'm i'm explaining today you can publicly find it in twitter and twitter is a great

source for crypto uh information and you can also follow me at red generator london encrypt on you can follow all of

the information that i'm sharing for example and you can get to know about it much more easier than listening to some

of the news which is probably almost always misreported in the news media so how it all started was uh on on 5th of

august enforcement directorate under the ministry of finance of india they posted a tweet saying that uh they had searched

the uh xerx cryptocurrency exchange and they had frozen the bank assets 165 crores

for assisting uh instant loan app companies in money laundering and fraud so this is the tweet and then there was

also a detailed press release in fact a lot of news media who have reported on it have probably not even read the

press release so what they have been accused of in reality is not for direct money

laundering so there are a number of uh um fintech instant loan up companies these are

basically like loan sharks and we used to have loan shares even before the internet age

so these loan sharks are now operating using technology and creating mobile apps and creating tele calling and

directly reaching out to you giving you an attractive loan but with a very high interest and this is what typically loan

sharks do and they make use of your situation when they give you a loan then they take like percent sixty percent

interest on top of it and you end up paying much more than you can afford to pay

and these companies um have been operating using various practices you know for example they

don't get license so they take a defunct financial organization's license and they piggyback and operate on it

and when the investigation started what ada is saying is that these loan sharks many of these fintech companies they

shut down their shops and they moved their money out of india through various means and

one of the means was they bought crypto in the crypto exchange like wazirex and they moved it out of india and that is

what um vaziriks is being asked for like to cooperate to help trace those instant loan up companies so

these loan app companies again in the in the press release uh ed is going on about how was there x is

operating basically that they operate from a cloud-based software like any technology company even google and

microsoft and everybody they operate from a cloud-based software which is basically there is no physical server or

something in a room out of which they operate that they can go and write it's a cloud computing is is

a spread computing basically so like you have an array of servers across the world and they all connect in a concept

called cloud and that's how they operate so which means that you cannot physically point to one particular

server or you can take a computer basically that's what they are talking about and the fact that they all operate

out of home in the remote working and this is quite common to the technology industry nothing new and they also have

this preferential agreement with binance and january labs that's the main confusion that comes into

confusion or that the main confusion that has happened actually but there are only two things that they primarily

accuse them of you can go through this entire press release i'll give you the link for the direct press release itself

from enforcement directed but the two things that they accuse them of is one is that proof of funds of the person

who's depositing money into their accounts so and then the details pertaining to

the off chain transaction that is again the key ah question that is coming into picture what is an off chain transaction

what is the non blockchain transaction which and the traceability of such transactions so we will see these two

points in detail but ed uh after the press release versiox have said that we've been working with enforcement

directorate for a number of days and we have responded to most of the queries transparently we are working will

continue to work with them this is something that is is is in progress is what they have said

and the two things that they are accused of mainly because we need to understand a bit more so that you can understand

the sequence of events later so one is the fact that how do these loan apps you know buy

crypto invest right that like any other person like any other indian citizen they can open a vazilex account they can

submit their kyc they can submit their documents you know the id cards and the photograph and proof of

um that their id card and everything and then you can open a uh an account in business like any other person and then

they have deposited funds from their own bank account which is what is allowed in the xerx to their own crypto exchange

and then they have bought um crypto assets using that like any other person that is allowed to do what ed is

questioning is why did wazirix not ask for proof of funds or or record the proof of funds uh of the deposits that

were made now if a crypto exchange this is again my understanding or my interpretation of this question and just

just a question you know if a crypto exchange has to ask for proof of funds from every person who's depositing money

into their account there's millions of customers that they need to go and ask you know what's your salary give me your

salary slip you know if you sold plants or crops or whatever it is if you are if you're in agriculture and show me

that you have field there's so many things that they need to ask to say that what's your proof of funds right so it

will delay the deposits even further or everyone knows that today even in normal circumstances the deposit

from a bank account to crypto exchange takes too much time in india right so um and this this is the if

if the crypto exchange needs to go and implement these things it will not only complicate things it will it will

increase the fees and it will also take a lot more time than what it takes today right so the complexity now if really

someone needs to ask for proof of funds why would it not be the bank's responsibility because the customers are

depositing money first into the bank account and then they are buying crypto out of it right or anything out of it so

why can't the bank then take the responsibility of making sure what is the proof of funds instead of um where

the person is spending the money with that money in the bank account right so again the you know they do have some

policies in place but i think it would be easier to directly ask the question to the bank because the money is coming

from the bank that's again just my understanding one question now the main thing that they are accused

of between on-chain and offshoring transactions is that um the on-chain transactions have no

issue ed have said that they have no issue the reason is all the crypto withdrawals from wazirex um are to

non-binance exchanges and wallets like you know if you're withdrawing your d5 wallet custodial wallet or

crypto.com or any other wallet for example there are three or four blockchains that was direct support they

don't support all the blockchains so like for example they support mainly your c20 protocol ethereum blockchain

they support xrp they support xlm for example so there are a few protocols at this support and all of these

transactions are recorded on the blockchain publicly and you can go and trace these blocks anybody can go and

trace these transactions publicly they don't even need to ask was a rex or finance or anybody so that is the beauty

about blockchain is that everything gets recorded publicly for everyone though so the main argument that you know internet

or crypto is being used for uh these sort of things is like it's completely invalid because crypto is one of the

most transparent uh mechanisms out there in terms of you know what transactions have happened

so the the one thing that they are accused of is that there is an option transaction which is basically if

someone transfers from wazirex to binance because there is a acquisition process in in progress which we

understand between binance and bazir x there is a off chain transaction which means that to save cost it is free of

cost right right now i think there is a small cost previously if you want to transfer your crypto assets like bitcoin

or ethereum or whatever from wazirex to binance you can do it free of cost between wazirex to binance on your own

account if you if that is your binance account this is your yzrex account you can connect it and you can bridge them

free of cost between the two exchanges and these transactions are not saved on blockchain because if you put it in

blockchain then it it has a fees to save the fees they have done it as an off chain transaction or a non-blockchain

transaction and this is saved in buzzer x database this is what ed is saying that it will give us more details about

it and the the more details that they are asking for is you know when somebody is transferring from a0x to binance you

can show what they have transferred how much they have transferred and all that but what they are asking for as i

understand the press releases that they are asking for the kyc on the binance side before you

allow the transfer now version x has already recorded the kyc on their side and wazirex already knows that this is

the same person that has opened an account in binance using a kyc process of finance so for them to probably again

record the kyc of binance into their website is probably an overkill because it's the same person who's done the kyc

in the exchange and has probably already gone and done the kyc on finance section only then would would he have been

allowed to open an account in finance so and then he has integrated both the accounts so was it x do not hold the kyc

of the person on the finance side and that is probably something that ed can directly ask binance and get the

information rather than asking for xerx now if it had been left at that point it would have been like a normal

investigation which is like happens pretty much all the time but what happened after that is what

threw this whole thing into an escalation so um cesar bernance jinxa who's the ceo of

finance came into picture and he tweeted immediately saying that there is a we wanted to put a quick thread and it was

very cryptic at that point of time when he was using word play for for example so you said that finance does not own

any equity in zenmai labs he didn't say finance does not own an equity in wazirex he said binance does not own any

equities in my labs and that is the entity that is operating with zerex and established by the

original founders meaning he's saying that uh initial seti and and code they own zanmai labs and they are the ones

who are operating with zerex this was very cryptic because everyone thought that banan's owned was rex and that is

the acquisition that happened but he said that in 2019 we started the acquisition process but it never got

completed and he has at any point of time never owned any shares of zanmai labs and again he's been very cryptic

here the entity operating was zerex now the um he also went on to say that but

binance does provide support of wallet services as a tech solution and there is an integration which he acknowledged to

save on the network fee so he acknowledges that much but he said the wazirex is responsible

for deposits and kyc and bank transactions and everything else on their side so

and then he said that the thing that ed is accusing uh was there except which is the bank transactions and the kyc

um you know we would love to work with the enforcement agency and collaborate with them so this is the tweet and uh

when you read it first it felt as if he's just distancing himself from wazirik saying that they don't own the

baziriks but it was very um cleverly worded i should say at that point of time so michelle obviously had to

respond and he responded saying that verzilex was in fact acquired by binance and janmai labs is an indian entity that

he owns and they have a license from finance to operate the inr crypto pairs off for zerex but binance operates the

crypto decryptor which means like bt suite ethereum bdc to usd all usdd pairs are operated by binance zen my labs

operate the um bitcoin to inr ethereum for example the inr patch and the indian uh deposits and everything so this is

what he said and he also said binance once he was iraq's domain name was text.com uh has access to all the cloud

computing servers and uh they own all the crypto assets they get the crypto profit so he's

trying to provide more clarity but again this is still not very clear at this point because it looked as if

immediately that they are contradicting each other this is what we got at that point of time so

so caesar again responded back saying that yes vazirik's domain is under our uh ownership and we have root access we

have shared route access to aws and uh we do provide wallet services for pasirex so all of this is acknowledging

right now and it's like little bit more clarity but it's still unclear at this point of time so and he said we can shut

down buzzer x because we want versus x.com but he again says that we do not have

control of the user sign up kyc back on deposits and withdrawals and that is all controlled by the x that my labs team so

this was never transferred and this is where the first piece of clue comes into picture the deal was never closed

or the deal was never completed that's what he's saying right so um the wazirex

founding team is saying they maintained operations and continue to do so and they want to directly work with

enforcement directorate to fix these issues in brazil texas what you say now

again it's starting to become clear but it's still not fully clear and but that point about deal not completing is what

uh uh makes sense but he also said that you know uh if you have funds in wazirex you should transfer it to finance this

is actually a bit of unclear um you know why he made that comment because he also said that they provide

wallet services which means that they own the wallets they want the crypto assets involved anyway so they don't

need to really transfer it to finance so then michelle obviously again you know they started debating about it

publicly and and provide more transparency actually the good thing that you know in the end it's

a good thing but you know i really did not like the way that two uh people like this were discussing uh something that

could have been more easily done offline and then they could have presented as a more clear picture so

so he is saying that that the part that then my labs is operating which is the signup process and everything that is

operating through a license from binance and let's close the deal let's complete the deal by acquiring the finishing of

the zanmai labs and transferring it as well so he also said that yes you know thank you for confirming that you can

share down buzzer x which means that you have root access of aws and the domain is owned by you so the only thing that

we are doing is the um the deposits withdrawal kyc which you can take over so

again he clarifies this point about this off chain transaction which is this uh you know crypto took the the the

exchange to exchange transfer between was zerex to finance where you can do it free of cost and this data he's saying

is always available in our database and we have always provided this data to the uh authorities whatever they have asked

for but what they have not provided is the kyc on the binance side which is what ed have said in the press release

so um and all user assets he's still saying that they are safe because the kyc is conducted and the assets are

actually owned by binance is what they are saying so and also the bank transfers are only allowed based on the

user's own account and even the binance transfer is confirming that is only allowed between the user's own account

so this is what is reiterating what we just said so again no now sees it obviously he's

saying that you know he's talking about word games but in my opinion he is the one who started the word games in the

first place i mean i have a huge respect for both of them but still you know it is both of them have been playing board

games so uh he does reiterate the same thing saying that you know we do own the

divine and but we do not own the control of the uh the source code and the deployment capability which means that

the in to make code changes to the exchange and everything is still controlled by xerx and he had asked for

transferring all of this even this year there's an ongoing discussion that is happening and this

was refused by the zerex and we do still do not have control over the systems and they have been uncooperative with us and

this is where the first clarification actually happens or at least to me that i understood

started understanding it a lot more better at this point of time because what he's saying is that when he's

saying uncooperative with us and incorporated with ed um there's a difference in terms of the

cooperation that he's talking about he's talking about m a and emerges and acquisition so

binance have started acquiring wazirex in 2019 and anybody who is familiar with the m a mergers and acquisitions

um they know that these things take time you know typical mergers and acquisitions takes like you know three

to four years um even higher as well sometimes it could be done faster so binance was started an m a process with

uh vasirex and they've been in the process of acquiring they've started acquiring some of these things like the

domain name like the strand aws control the wallet services there is still a certain portion of

operations that is still remaining with zenmai labs which they are yet to acquire and close the deal or complete

the deal so when you announce the deal saying that we are acquiring this company it doesn't happen in day one it

happens over a period of months and days and through a series of procedures you know technology is transferred code is

transferred people are transferred so it slowly happens over a period of time so that transition the deal hasn't closed

or completed is what um cz is saying this is exactly what initial is also saying that the the whole acquisition

process is still in progress this is all they had to say in fact to make it clear if they had said in the first place the

acquisition process is still in progress seventy percent has been already transferred to finance as a thirty

percent that has still not been transferred which is the uh bank account deposit and uh the kyc processes which

is what ed is questioning and so binance doesn't have any control over it then it would have been much more clearer if he

had worded it this way and in between all this because people had

to jump in right people jumped into conclusion and especially the social the the news media

they started reporting miss reporting and misrepresenting the data and the figures so in fact one person called a

purim until she texted she tweeted saying that uh the cs had personally told me that you know he does

not own any stake in the parent entity or for zerex and this was completely uh false what what that line means is

completely false because what they are talking about is entirely different so cesar then had to respond saying that i

did not even speak to this person so again this is how the indian media has been reporting this completely uh false

reporting that has been happening and that is causing more confusion out of what is what is actually truly happening

behind the scenes so the all they are talking about is a mergers and acquisition that has not completely

fully closed yet so again one person another interesting tweet more uh light on what is happening

is that who is making the revenue who's getting the revenues getting majority of the fees

so again initial clarified that you know if it is crypto to crypto trading btc ethereum btc two xrp xlm whatever it is

all the in usdt pass it the revenue goes to binance you know they take the direct revenue so which means that they do own

part of the equity or for but zanmai labs which is operating the inr crypto

pair and also the deposit and withdrawals they take fees from these transactions and

it is happening because there is a reverse license that has been given by binance tools and my labs to operate

this so this is basically typical in an m a where you know you start acquiring and then you give a portion of it back

to the company to say that you operated for a few months and we'll take it back from you because it's convenient for

them to do that at that point of time for various reasons this is all like you know there will be a lot of nda behind

the m and they wouldn't be able to disclose it why it was done in the first place but he also threw a bit more light

saying that there was an original patent entity and there was some restructuring of finance and that is why it has been

uh taking many months that why they are they're still waiting for the parent entity so this legal clause is being put

in which is why the deal is probably not being completed so he is bringing all that into picture

and also the fact that uh the original deal the original acquisition deal included the sale of the ip and

technology and that technology was then again licensed back to uh zenmai labs which is how than my labs is operating

the crypto crypto the the iron architecture trading and the deposits and withdrawals basically so it's

very clear about the fact that it's an acquisition process that is still not completed at this point of time but this

is what they should have done in the first place so he's again happy to say that you know

let's continue to um you know close the deal and let's let's get uh um the janma labs deal closed because

then you basically need to pay more money and get the shares acquire more shares of my laps

he is also saying that we have been cooperating with ed it's been happening for more than seven days and we have

provided them all the data which is what we've already said in the first place that whatever data they have they have

already provided it is accusing them of data that they don't have which was saying we don't need to have it because

technically we don't need to and we don't need to know the proof offense or we don't need to know you know what is

the kyc on the binance side where we are transferred so this page will give you a lot more clarity of who owns first

binance obviously owns the versidx domain name has the root access shared root access which they've clarified on

the amazon web services on which exchange runs and they also control and run the crypto to crypto packs which

means btc ethereum btc xrp for example and all the usdt pass if you want to exchange from one crypto to another

crypto binance runs it and controls it and they get the fees and revenue from it and they also control the crypto

withdrawals which means unchained blockchain withdrawals like erc20 or xrp or whatever it is it is all fully

controlled with binance and they also control the xerx wallets wallet services and wallets which means that they own

the crypto assets that are stored in uh in wazirik so these are all non-custodial wallets which means

binance controls the custody of these wallets is what my understanding is again from the tweets what janmy labs

controls is they have shared aw success as well which means they deploy the code they they control on the source code and

the plot changes to the source code they run the crypto inr pair and they get the revenue from the crypto in rpa

for example btc inr and they also control the onboarding the kyc the signup process the anti-money

laundering laws and deposit in exchange and withdrawal from the bank accounts all of this is controlled by zen malaps

and this thing in red about the inr deposit in withdrawal and fees is what is the main aspect that is in question

by the enforcement directorate which is why finance is distancing themselves from those operations that is what cesar

is trying to say and that is what nishal is also trying to say but they haven't said it in

the clarity that we would have loved for them to say it and they don't own the crypto assets and they operate under the

license from binance you in this whole m a process that is why they are continuing to operate these things um

listed on the right side now um again cesar points out to this off chain

transaction to save on the network fees and this is the key point that ed is again bringing into

picture to save on the network fees that is what they are both saying that between wrx and finance they have

enabled this free transfer of crypto non-blockchain transactions um

to facilitate the users to transfer freely between these exchanges as part of this

mnat now this is what ed is calling out again i'm reiterating the same thing calling

out as non-recording of transactions in the blockchain to save cost again which is saved in the varix database which

they have shared with the ed is what michel is claiming now

in summary basically it is very sad that uh reputed industry leaders crypto leaders

like nisha and cesar uh are are going and and having this dispute uh in a public forum like this

instead they could have just sat down privately had a call and and shown in united stand

i have great administration for both of them they have both done um an excellent job in crypto adoption safety you know

2017 2016 it was very difficult to buy crypto in india for example and if you want to buy there were a lot of scammers

who are cheating people and once initial and people like caesar came into picture

it's becoming more and more easier and safer to buy crypto and operate crypto so it is really hard to see uh industry

leaders like these guys repeated industry industries guys and going and having a go at each other uh publicly

so one of the reasons could be that binance has been carefully building a legally

compliant image crypto friendly image uh crypto government friendly image because there's a lot of allegations

that wash they were thrown at them last year in fact in episode 30 i had even talked about the fact that you know

there was a news about banan being banned in uk which was completely untrue so

uh fca and a lot of authorities in europe had been investigating binance because finance doesn't have a proper hq

where are they operating under there were a lot of questions being thrown around

over the last few months cesar has been carefully building a regulatory image for finance

and they have been going and acquiring licenses working with european bodies working with various countries trying to

build a more government friendly crypto exchange image which is probably very very rare for

crypto exchanges to do so um all of that work they were probably thrown into a knee-jerk reaction when they heard this

enforcement director news saying that they are they are being accused of uh they've been um

involved in something related to money laundering and some things i'm in a major market like india so he probably

just wanted to immediately distance himself from that red aspect of what is being accused of and he was trying to

you know just just make sure that all his work in the last few months doesn't get impacted this is

my understanding but um again you know it could have been done a lot more better if he and nishal

had sat down and put put out a joint statement rather the mna probably came into a picture in

between all of this and hope this brought more clarity than what you've read directly in the news media because

there was a lot of confusion even i was confused when i read the tweets the first time

and so final words as always i know some questions will come up you know what do you do with my crypto if i have to trust

somebody export what i do what am i doing right where do i keep my cryptos i've said it in multiple uh

videos multiple uh episodes that today are 75 percent of my right ever since episode 23 and 24 where i've

explained why you should move your crypto assets to d5 wallets non-custodial wallets um i have kept my

crypto in mostly in non-coastal walleting in cold wallets and hot wallets um and i will make a video about

you know how to use cold wallets as well separately hardware wallets but i have pretty much kept it in like

you know 25 wallet metamask and and coinbase wallet and and these kind of d5 wallets

which are non-custodial wallets which are entirely owned by you and not given custody to an exchange

and there is about 25 percent rest of my assets are split between five main custodial wallets in exchanges product

com coinbase finance petroleum was rex for obvious reasons but i've explained all of this in my previous videos

because i trust only these exchanges rest of the central exchanges i have no trust on

and i also use these i mean i also keep it in this because people often know that

you know i make demo videos and i need to transfer funds out of this to show how it works and so i keep it in these

five for diversity i could move it to maybe two or three of them but it helps me to keep the diversity

so if i had funds exclusively in version i did not operate anything just for the diversity because it is not safe to keep

all your eggs in one basket i would consider moving some of it to binance and crypto.com just for the case of

diversity not because the funds are not safe i still have hundred percent confidence in birthdays so

hopefully this provided all the answers that you're looking for and it gave you the clarity that you needed

until next time thank you bye