CoinDCX News:Well-known blockchain investigator ZachXBT calls on users of the Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX to withdraw their funds. He accuses the founder of the exchange of initially denying a loss of about $16 million before finally admitting it.
“If you value your assets, withdraw all the funds from CoinDCX,” ZachXBT wrote on X. He also referred to his co-founder as a “clown managing a circus.”
How did the event begin?
On October 21st, the blockchain tracking account marked as USDT, which contained approximately $15.99 million, had funds transferred out of a wallet associated with CoinDCX. Subsequently, this amount of money was split and sent to the recharge addresses of Binance, OKX, and Gate.
CoinDCX, co-founder, quickly denied the related reports. He stated that these addresses were old addresses that were compromised when the exchange was hacked in July 2025, and that CoinDCX's current wallet had not been invaded. He called it a false report and asked the public not to spread rumors.
ZachXBT What has been discovered?
ZachXBT indicates that the affected wallet starts with “TQKJQ” and is not yet deprecated. According to him:
- A liquidity provider continued to use that wallet for 10 months after the hack in July 2025.
- Until April and May 2026, this wallet was still accepting user recharges and transferring the funds to the currently publicly available hot wallet CoinDCX.
- This means that approximately $15.8 million in user top-ups was not recorded by the CoinDCX team.
Explanation of CoinDCX
Subsequently, CoinDCX released a more comprehensive update, stating:
- The wallet was hacked in July 2025, and since then it has been disabled. Users were also informed not to transfer any funds to that address anymore.
- However, some users continue to top up this old address.
- The process that was supposed to automatically transfer these recharges to the secure wallet became ineffective for a period of time, and the company only discovered this issue on the morning of the day when the update was released.
- The resulting "operational losses" have been borne by CoinDCX themselves, and all recharges for affected users have been credited back to their accounts.
- Customer assets are stored in independent cold wallets, and transactions are running normally.
The exchange did not provide a specific amount in US dollars for this loss.
ZachXBT Why Anger?
ZachXBT indicates that before the loss was confirmed, CoinDCX denied this theft incident both publicly and privately. In his view, this means that the team is 'blatantly lying' or 'so negligent as to be almost incompetent'.
He also compared CoinDCX with WazirX and BitBNS, stating that both of these Indian exchanges have also faced security issues. He also mentioned that he is still assisting CoinDCX in freezing some of the stolen funds, with the amount reaching six figures in US dollars.
The on-chain tracking account Onchain Lens indicates that these funds seem to be being transferred through some less well-known services and coin mixing platforms. The account also added that the amount transferred is almost exactly consistent with the amount recharged by users into that untracked wallet.
Questions still to be answered
Critics on X hope that CoinDCX will provide explanations regarding the following three points:
- How the failure of a collection process can lead to losses of approximately $15 to $16 million
- Why can users still transfer funds to an address that is supposedly deactivated?
- Why don't exchanges automatically block old recharge addresses?
CoinDCX has required users to obtain update information only through its official channels.
