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Is Crypto Funding India’s Cockroach Protest? We Traced the Money

The most misleading phrase in crypto security may also be the most familiar one.

A smart contract can execute exactly as written and still become part of a theft. If you wonder how, have you considered that the code may never be the part that breaks?

We blame smart contracts (the code), but the real vulnerability is the humans running the project. Attackers aren’t finding brilliant math flaws; they are tricking a founder into clicking a bad link, stealing their computer’s access keys, and altering the app from the inside. Yet once funds move on-chain, these failures often get flattened into the same headline category. Yep, you guessed it right – A DeFi hack!

That is the diagnosis problem.

A smart-contract bug, a bridge-signature compromise, an oracle failure, a governance abuse path and a stolen private key do not describe the same wound. Once the failure is misnamed, the fix starts in the wrong place.

Ethereal Ventures recently framed this as a control-plane problem – The security of the systems around the protocol, not only the protocol logic itself. AMBCrypto takes that argument in a narrower direction. In fact, before the industry debates the fix, it needs to name the failure correctly.

Of course, the data makes the mislabeling harder to ignore. For example, Halborn found that in 2024, off-chain incidents made up 56.5% of attacks and 80.5% of stolen funds.

Source: Halborn’s 2025 review of the top 100 DeFi hacks Chainalysis also found that private-key compromises accounted for the largest share of stolen cryptos in 2024.

So, the uncomfortable question is simple: Is “better code” enough when the attacker’s best path is stealing the key that tells the code what to do?

If most losses are coming from off-chain weaknesses, why does the industry keep calling every major incident a DeFi hack?

A headline is not a diagnosis “DeFi hack” works as a headline because it is short. It fails as a diagnosis because it hides the thing that actually broke.

Ritesh Kakkad, Co-founder of XDC Network, put it bluntly when he said,

The term DeFi hack has done a lot of damage. Not because it’s wrong, but because every time something breaks we use it as a full stop instead of a starting point. Ronin, Nomad, both got filed under the same label but they were trust architecture failures, nothing to do with contract quality.

That distinction matters.

So, what actually broke? A stolen private key, a bridge-validator failure, a poisoned interface and broken protocol logic may all end with funds moving on-chain. But they begin in different places.

This brings us to where the knowledge of the application plane and control plane helps.

Source: AWS Documentation / Application vs Control Plane The application plane is what users touch and includes swaps, lending markets, vaults, transfers and bridge activity. The control plane is what gives the system authority to act: admin keys, signers, upgrade paths, bridge validators, oracles and governance permissions. Then, there is the human and operational layer around it: devices, GitHub access, CI/CD pipelines, cloud accounts, contractor permissions and incident response.

And yet, most public narratives collapse these layers into one word – Hack.

Imagine opening a DeFi app and approving what appears to be a routine transaction. The page looks familiar. The wallet prompt seems normal. The blockchain later records a valid approval. But what if the screen was altered before the signer ever saw it? What if the failure sat in the app interface, the access credentials, or the workflow around the signing process?

How does crypto security compare to traditional tech companies? Traditional enterprise systems usually separate these failures because each one triggers a different response. Crypto often loses that precision once the stolen funds land on a block explorer.

Operational layer Enterprise tech norm Common Web3 weakness Access control Limits who can log in, from which device, and with what approval. Admin duties are conducted on personal laptops, with core team members often coordinating multi-million dollar actions over standard Telegram or Discord chats. Control plane Layered approval systems and audit trails Multisig can still leave too much power with a small group of people and keys. CI/CD Separates testing, approval, and release, so bad updates are harder to push live. Compromised credentials can alter what users or signers see Failure mode changes from case to case The post-mortems (or evidence) tell a more complicated story than the headlines. Most crypto post-mortems begin too late. They ask, “How much was stolen?” before asking, “What actually failed?”

Look at Ronin, for instance, remembered as one of crypto’s defining bridge hacks. In March 2022, attackers drained 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC from the Ronin Bridge. However, the mechanics matter here.

Ronin’s bridge needed 5-of-9 validator signatures to approve withdrawals. The attacker did not need to find a conventional smart-contract bug to get there. Four Sky Mavis validator keys were compromised. The fifth approval came through an old Axie DAO permission path linked to Ronin’s gas-free RPC setup, which had not been properly revoked.

Once those five approvals were in place, the bridge treated the withdrawals as valid.

That is the part the “bridge hack” label tends to flatten. The weak point was not simply the bridge as a product, or DeFi as a category. It was the authority structure around the bridge: who could approve movement, how those approvals were protected, and why an old access path was still capable of mattering.

It’s the same story elsewhere Ronin was not an exception. Orbit Chain, WazirX and Bybit all point to the same pattern from different angles. Even the wrench attack incidents in France belong in the broader diagnostic conversation. They were not DeFi failures, but they showed the same uncomfortable truth: attackers follow control, whether that control sits in code, a multisig, a browser interface, or a person.

Where is the money going? The broader data complicates the usual story too.

Immunefi recorded $1.635 billion in crypto losses across 40 incidents in Q1 2025. They tagged it the worst quarter for hacks in crypto’s history. But the split matters.

Source: Immunefi Crypto Losses Q1 2025 Report Most of that figure came from two CEXs. And together, those incidents accounted for roughly 94% of the quarter’s losses.

That does not mean DeFi risk disappeared. But by value, the quarter was dominated by CeFi and signing-related failures, not a wave of protocol-math breaks.

Chainalysis’ report on theft highlighted something similar too.

Source: Chainalysis / Cryptocurrency hack volumes over time It also found that personal wallet compromises became a larger part of the loss picture, rising from 7.3% of stolen value in 2022 to 44% in 2024. 158,000 individual wallet-compromise incidents affected 80,000 unique victims in 2025, even as DeFi hack losses stayed suppressed despite higher TVL.

Read together, the data does not let either side win an easy argument.

On-chain code still fails. Off-chain systems clearly fail too. The more useful pattern is that large losses increasingly expose the machinery around the code: validators, signers, interfaces, wallet infrastructure, cloud systems, personal devices and human access. But the bigger danger begins after the first failure.

Why does one small mistake crash the whole system? In DeFi, a broken assumption rarely stays where it starts. A bridge asset can become collateral. Collateral can support loans. Loans can feed vaults. Vaults can sit inside aggregators. By the time users see the headline, the risk may have already passed through several layers. That is where misdiagnosis becomes more than sloppy language.

For your context, in TradFi, if a bank fails, regulators might freeze assets while they figure out what happened. In DeFi, code executes automatically.

Once systems are connected, naming the wrong failure can distort how the market understands every exposure built on top of it.

Domino effect of interconnected risk Composability is usually treated as DeFi’s great advantage. Protocols seamlessly plug into one another, assets migrate across chains, tokens double as collateral, and liquidity is recycled endlessly across markets.

However, this frictionless design is a double-edged sword because the very architecture that accelerates growth also accelerates failure.

When a cross-chain bridge issues an asset, that asset rarely stays put. It travels. It enters lending markets, sits inside yield vaults, gets routed through aggregators, or serves as collateral for entirely separate positions.

If the bridge’s security model breaks, the damage cannot be contained to the bridge contract itself. Every downstream protocol that treated that bridged asset as a safe, pristine store of value suddenly inherits the rot.

This is where the “Money Lego” metaphor starts to look too clean.

Source: Mapping Microscopic and Systemic Risks in TradFi and DeFi XChainWatcher makes the bridge version of this problem clearer. The study found that bridge vulnerabilities have caused $3.2 billion in losses since May 2021, while also flagging failures that normal “DeFi hack” coverage can miss.

Source: XChainWatcher / Ronin attack discovered days after malicious withdrawals So, the first failure may begin as a bridge assumption, a signer, an oracle, or a governance path. The second-order failure is “trust” moving downstream. Toxins move through the financial plumbing long before the market even realizes a breach has occurred.

Better question is which layer failed Did the code behave incorrectly? Was the protocol fed bad data? Did a bridge validator or multisig signer lose authority? Was a frontend or CI/CD pipeline compromised before users even saw the transaction? Did governance change the rules? Or was the person with access targeted directly?

Those questions lead to different answers.

Better audits matter, yes. They can reduce code-level risk. But they cannot solve stolen keys, compromised signers, weak bridge controls, exposed cloud credentials, and poor operational security. And, they definitely can’t stop people being targeted because they control access to crypto wealth.

That is the point of being precise. If the industry keeps mislabeling the failure, it will keep fighting the wrong battle.

“DeFi hack” may remain useful as a headline shortcut. As a diagnosis though, it is often too blunt to be true. Maybe the better question is where the failure actually began.

Final Summary DeFi protocols plug into one another seamlessly; a security breach at one foundational layer causes immediate downstream damage. An overwhelming majority of stolen funds are actually lost to off-chain operational failures, compromised signing keys, and human vulnerabilities.

Madras High Court Rules XRP Is Property in Landmark WazirX Case

COINTELEGRAPH: Indian court steps in over WazirX XRP distribution tied to 2024 hack

Somewhat unsurprisingly, a court in India recently ruled in favor of an XRP investor against crypto exchange  WazirX and provider the trader with interim protection by preventing the digital assets platform from reallocating the customer’s XRP holdings. In an order issued this past Saturday (on October 25, 2025) by the Madras High Court, Justice N. Anand Venkatesh ruled that WazirX would not be able to redistribute a user’s XRP assets (valued at around $9,500 at current market prices) to absorb platform losses after a massive $230 million hack / security breach in July of last year.

As a key aspect of its ongoing restructuring process, digital assets exchange WazirX stated that it plans to move forward with a “socialization of losses” plan, asking clients, including customers that don’t have any ERC-20 tokens, to simply “absorb” a certain portion of losses in their portfolios.

The court judge in India said that the proposed plan must not apply to the user maintaining XRP tokens in their account, as the pilfered crypto-assets were ERC-20 tokens that are considered to be fundamentally different types of virtual currencies.

Unfortunately, this type of socializing of losses recovery strategy must not even be considered for any customer funds lost due to any hack or situation out of their control. This practice must not be encouraged or somehow become normalized or thought of as standard practice. Should these types of approaches persist, then customers will lose trust in crypto exchanges in general.

Notably, the Indian court’s recent ruling focused on basic property rights, noting that the said client’s XRP holdings, which were acquired well before the hacking incident, remain rightfully theirs and, therefore, must not get diluted just to make up for the exchange’s own shortcomings.

The court also stated that crypto holdings are considered property under the existing legal and regulatory framework, as they are capable of “being possessed” by an individual or organization.

The latest ruling determined that the customer is rightfully entitled to a temporary form of protection as per the nation’s current Arbitration and Conciliation Act. The court judge has now instructed the management at WazirX to provide a bank guarantee of around $11,500 in local currency. Alternatively, they can deposit the same funds in an escrow account as temporary protection for the client, while awaiting arbitration on the matter.

As reported this past week, WazirX resumed its crypto trading operations following Singapore’s High Court giving the green light to its restructuring phase, which is said to be supported by the vast majority of active creditors.

The damaging security breach this past year and hack resulted in a extended platform suspension. As widely reported, the exploit was carried out by North Korea’s Lazarus Group, which had targeted a certain vulnerability in the service provider’s multi-sig crypto wallet infrastructure.

Clearly, WazirX’s plans to “socialize” the losses is a sign of poor judgement and decision-making. But unlike more prominent and systemically significant exchanges like ByBit, which had also been hacked, WazirX simply does not have the resources or industry backing to do much better. However, the management at the exchange has also tried to avoid accountability as much as possible, as indicated in the general manner in which they have communicated since the incident.

THE STREET: Exclusive: WazirX founder Nischal Shetty responds to ownership dispute with Binance

Morgan Stanley raises Micron's price target to $1,200, maintains 'Overweight' rating.

Morgan Stanley released a report raising Micron Technology (MU.O)’s price target from $1,050 to $1,200, while maintaining an "Overweight" rating. The investment bank lifted its fiscal 2027 earnings per share (EPS) forecast for the chipmaker by roughly 40% to $168, and upgraded its free cash flow (FCF) projection from $104 billion to $140 billion. Aligning with Micron’s management, the bank holds that AI will push DRAM demand to consistently outpace supply significantly after 2027. Micron’s last fiscal quarter results matched this trend, with both its quarterly performance and outlook showing notable upside potential.

6 minutes ago

US officials: Israel has withdrawn troops from parts of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

A U.S. State Department official said Israel has withdrawn from parts of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon, describing the move as a "goodwill gesture" toward the Lebanese government.

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CBRS trades below IPO price post-earnings: Erases all gains six weeks after listing, two smart money firms net $5.8 million from first-day IPO shorts.

According to Hyperinsight monitoring, Cerebras (CBRS), the AI chip firm previously dubbed "Nvidia’s strongest challenger", saw its stock price fall in stages after reporting its first quarterly results since going public, as negative guidance overshadowed better-than-expected performance. The stock has dropped roughly 22% since the earnings release and officially broke below its IPO price today. On-chain whales are overall bearish. CBRS trades at $184 on the Hyperliquid platform, down 7.7% in 24 hours. Large-scale short positions (million-dollar level) total around $11.62 million, 2.39 times the long positions ($4.87 million). Two major short positions were placed precisely at high levels as early as the IPO day or even before the IPO: - Whale 0xe0ff: Shorted at $284.51 on May 14 with a 3x leveraged position of $6.13 million, generating an unrealized profit of $3.24 million (+104%); - Whale 0x9996: Shorted at $275.92 on May 11 with a 5x leveraged position of $5.48 million, generating an unrealized profit of $2.64 million (+162%). It is learned that both addresses currently hold short positions in both CBRS and SPCX, and have recorded substantial unrealized profits, preferring to place short positions at high levels before or on the day of major stock listings. With the realization of negative earnings news in this round, the combined unrealized profit of the two positions is around $5.88 million. Currently, the average entry price of CBRS short whales is around $275, and the current price is over 30% lower than that. The nearest short liquidation line is at $200.13, about 7% away from the current price.

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Multiple high-performing domestic public mutual fund products have tightened their purchase restrictions.

E Fund Management announced in its latest filing that the E Fund Information Industry Select Fund, managed by Zheng Xi, has cut its purchase limit to 10,000 yuan. The same purchase limit reduction to 10,000 yuan applies to another fund under his management, E Fund Information Industry Fund, while E Fund Global Growth Select Hybrid Fund (QDII) has lowered its purchase limit to 10 yuan. In addition, Guolianan Preferred Industry Fund, Harvest Tech Innovation Fund, and Principal Performance-Driven Fund have also announced purchase limits or adjustments to their limits recently. Jin Zicai, a fund manager closely watched by the market, imposed additional purchase limits on multiple public offering funds under his management, with the four funds involved cutting their purchase limits to 500 yuan starting June 23. Purchase limits on high-performing funds likely stem from multiple considerations: they can avoid return dilution caused by short-term concentrated subscriptions, and proactive limits during overheated market conditions also send risk warning signals to the market. As the first half of the year draws to a close, such moves have become increasingly frequent. Overall, Wind data shows that since June alone, 19 funds with year-to-date net asset value returns exceeding 90% have suspended large subscriptions or adjusted their purchase caps. (Source: Cailian Press)

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The US stock market's optical communication sector rises across the board in pre-market trading, with Corning up 9.28%.

According to Bitget market data, the U.S. stock market's optical communication sector saw broad pre-market gains, with MRVL rising 4.99%, LITE up 3.24%, Nokia up 3.11%, Corning up 9.28%, and AXTI up 6.69%.

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US-listed AI chip stocks saw mixed pre-market performance, with Qualcomm surging 13%.

According to Bitget market data, U.S. AI chip stocks posted mixed pre-market performance: Qualcomm (QCOM.O) surged 13%, Intel (INTC.O) rose nearly 6%, AMD (AMD.O) gained nearly 4%, and Google (GOOG.O) declined 1.4%.

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A Shiba Inu whale wallet holding over $16.1 million secretly moved 15 billion SHIB, worth $118,350, in a transaction that raises more questions than answers. The wallet, labeled "YFI Whale" on Arkham, holds 608.6 billion SHIB worth about $4.83 million, making it one of the top nonexchange holders. 

Of particular note is the wallet's repeated use of WazirX-linked addresses (0xA9d, 0xe9E and 0x875), suggesting that the owner is likely based in India and operating via domestic exchange rails.

Source: ArkhamOver the past 24 hours, 158 billion SHIB were sent to the counterparty address "0xA78B...b40," which has moved over $170,000 in Ethereum-chain assets this week alone. An hour later, a small amount of 1.53 million SHIB flowed back from a separate wallet.

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This is not an isolated signal as, over the past seven days, this whale has moved more than $200,000 across a small cluster of addresses, with all flows pointing toward WazirX deposit endpoints.

Why now? Shiba Inu (SHIB) is trading near $0.00000790, down 1.13% today. The price remains locked between the $0.00000899 resistance level and the $0.00000659 support level, an area that is becoming more and more squeezed with declining volume. 

Because this move occurred just as volatility narrowed, it could hint at a strategic repositioning ahead of a potential larger breakout or breakdown.

Beyond SHIB, the wallet holds $5.11 million in USDT, $384,000 in GALA, $369,000 in JASMY and smaller amounts in SAND, UNI and 1INCH.

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There is no panic or liquidation. It is just a quiet outflow through the Indian exchange infrastructure. Based on the size, structure and route, it appears to be preparation, not reaction. 

Whether that means an exit, redistribution or accumulation will be known only once the SHIB price reacts.

Solana-based Drift Protocol has suffered the largest exploit of 2026 to date, losing nearly $300 million in a “highly sophisticated operation” that has raised concerns about the growing threat of human-targeted attacks in the crypto space.

Solana DEX Loses $285M On April Fool’s Day On Wednesday, Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Drift Protocol was the victim of an exploit that stole hundreds of millions of dollars from its vaults. After online reports flagged unusual on-chain activity yesterday afternoon, Drift’s official channels confirmed the attack, quickly suspending deposits and withdrawals.

Drift Protocol confirms the attack. Source: X According to reports, the attack lasted less than 20 minutes and stole around $285 million in multiple assets, including USDC, JPL, USDT, JUP, USDS, WBTC, and WETH, from nearly 20 vaults. This marks the largest crypto exploit of 2026 to date, and one of the largest hacks in the industry, just above WazirX’s $235 million hack.

The hack wiped out half of the Solana-based project’s total value locked (TVL), which fell from roughly $550 million to $252 million, per DeFiLlama data. Drift protocol’s token, DRIFT, also plunged, retracing nearly 40% over the past 24 hours.

Within hours, the exploiter had swapped $270.9 million into USDC, bridged them from Solana to Ethereum via the CCTP TokenMessengerMinterV2, and purchased 129,000 ETH, splitting them across multiple wallets.

In a Thursday post, Drift shared the details of the incident, affirming that “a malicious actor gained unauthorized access to Drift Protocol through a novel attack involving durable nonces, resulting in a rapid takeover of Drift’s Security Council administrative powers.”

Solana’s durable nonces are an advanced mechanism that allows transactions to bypass the typical short expiration date of regular transactions. This enables users to pre-sign transactions for future execution, offline signing, or complex multisig workflows.

“This was a highly sophisticated operation that appears to have involved multi-week preparation and staged execution, including the use of durable nonce accounts to pre-sign transactions that delayed execution,” the post continued.

Malicious Actors Targeting Humans, Not Smart Contracts The Solana-based DEX emphasized that the exploit was not the result of a bug in Drift’s programs or smart contracts, noting that they found no evidence of compromised see phrases either.

“The attack involved unauthorized or misrepresented transaction approvals obtained prior to execution, likely facilitated through durable nonce mechanisms and sophisticated social engineering,” the project underscored.

Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation, addressed the incident, asserting that it is a blow to the whole Solana ecosystem. Liu pointed out that “Smart contracts held up. The real targets now are humans: social engineering and opsec weaknesses more than code exploits.”

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet linked Drift’s attack method to Bybit’s $1.4 billion hack, which was attributed to North Korean hacking groups. As he explained, the attackers likely compromised several machines belonging to multisig signers through long-term infiltration and misled operators into approving the malicious transactions.

This modus operandi is similar to the Bybit hack last year, widely attributed to DPRK-linked actors. The pattern is becoming familiar: patient, sophisticated supply-chain-level compromise targeting the human and operational layer, not the smart contracts themselves.

Guillemet affirmed that the incident is “yet another wake-up call for the industry” to raise the bar on security. “Ultimately, security is not just about code audits. It’s about giving operators and users the right information at the right time, so they can make informed decisions about what they sign,” he concluded.

Solana trades at $76 in the one-week chart. Source: SOLUSDT on TradingView Featured Image from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com

The operational and compliance landscape for international digital asset enterprises is facing heightened legislative oversight in South Asia as India accelerates its efforts to formalize a national crypto policy. In a major sovereign policy development, India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has convened an extraordinary high-level consultation meeting directly engaging executive leadership from the world’s largest digital asset exchange, Binance, alongside prominent domestic trading platforms WazirX and ZebPay. This legislative intervention represents a critical turning point in the nation’s long-debated approach to virtual digital assets, which has historically leaned heavily on restrictive fiscal measures rather than a unified statutory framework. By bringing both offshore giants and major domestic pioneers to the same parliamentary table, the committee signals a definitive shift toward active, structural state oversight designed to balance consumer protection with technological innovation.

Harmonizing Cross-Border Compliance and Levelling the Domestic Playing Field The primary objective of the parliamentary panel is to establish clear jurisdictional boundaries and robust enforcement mechanics for offshore platforms operating within India’s massive retail sector. This focus has intensified following Binance’s high-profile interaction with the nation’s Financial Intelligence Unit, which resulted in significant tax dispute resolutions and mandated a formal registration process for the global exchange to legalise its domestic user base. Indian lawmakers are deeply concerned with ensuring a level playing field, as local exchanges like WazirX and ZebPay have repeatedly argued that strict domestic fiscal policies—such as the flat thirty percent capital gains tax and the mandatory one percent tax deducted at source framework—have driven substantial trading volumes away to non-compliant offshore entities. By enforcing identical anti-money laundering protocols and geographic reporting requirements across all platforms, the state aims to eliminate these regulatory arbitrage gaps, domesticate capital flight, and ensure that every transaction involving an Indian citizen adheres strictly to the country’s financial guidelines.

Structuring the Future Statutory Architecture and Overcoming Inter-Agency Gridlock Beyond immediate compliance enforcement, the consultation serves as the foundational groundwork for the government’s upcoming, highly anticipated cryptocurrency legislation paper. The parliamentary committee is actively evaluating competing structural proposals regarding which domestic authority should command ultimate oversight over virtual assets. While the central bank continues to maintain a highly conservative stance due to perceived threats to monetary stability, alternative legislative models suggest distributing supervision across specialized market agencies based on asset classification, effectively separating the oversight of stablecoins, utility tokens, and investment securities. Furthermore, the introduction of private member initiatives like the Asset Tokenisation Bill in parliament has expanded the legislative debate to include real-world asset tokenization, pushing lawmakers to look past basic speculative retail trading. The outcomes of tomorrow’s direct dialogue with exchange executives will directly shape the definitive legal parameters of the upcoming statutory framework, determining how digital asset platforms manage liquidity and scale operations within one of the world’s fastest-growing digital economies.

About the Author: Karthik Subramanian

Karthik Subramanian is a founder, writer, and technology consultant with nine years in the crypto ecosystem. He covers token economics, L1/L2 infrastructure, DeFi protocols, wallets/custody, and the bridge between crypto and forex—broker technology, liquidity, and macro drivers. Karthik’s writing focuses on clear, practical frameworks that help professionals evaluate new products and on-chain innovation alongside FX market realities.

India’s Standing Committee on Finance convened at Parliament House Annexe in New Delhi on May 20 to hear oral evidence from representatives of ZebPay, Binance, and WazirX on the subject of virtual digital assets and the way forward. 

The hearing marks one of the most formal engagements between India’s legislative apparatus and the global crypto industry to date, coming after years of regulatory ambiguity that drove significant trading volume to offshore platforms.

The Tax That Drove Volume OffshoreIndia introduced a 30% flat tax on crypto gains with no loss offsetting provision in 2022, alongside a 1% TDS on every transaction. The measures did not suppress adoption. They redirected it. Exchanges outside Indian jurisdiction absorbed the volume, removing it from Indian tax collection and Indian consumer protection frameworks simultaneously.

The Lok Sabha session represents a recognition that discouragement has not worked and that structured engagement is the more productive path.

Exclusive: Pi42 CEO Speaks to CoinpediaAvinash Shekhar, Co-Founder and CEO of Pi42, spoke to Coinpedia about the significance of Wednesday’s parliamentary session.

“India bringing major global and domestic crypto platforms into formal policy discussions is a significant step for the industry’s long-term evolution,” Shekhar said. “It signals that the conversation is gradually moving from uncertainty toward structured engagement between policymakers and the ecosystem.”

Shekhar said the scale of India’s existing user base makes regulatory clarity increasingly urgent.

“India already represents one of the world’s largest digital asset user bases, and with participation continuing to grow, regulatory clarity becomes increasingly important for investor protection, market transparency, and responsible innovation.”

He described the practical value of direct dialogue between policymakers and practitioners.

“These discussions can help policymakers better understand how areas such as compliance, custody, taxation, cybersecurity, and cross-border transactions function in practice. They also create an opportunity to build frameworks that are aligned with India’s financial priorities while learning from global regulatory models.”

On the stakes of getting the framework right, Shekhar was direct.

“A balanced and well-defined framework would strengthen confidence among users, institutions, and businesses, while encouraging more innovation and liquidity to remain within regulated Indian platforms rather than moving offshore.”

The Compliance Infrastructure ChallengeThe regulatory conversation in India extends beyond crypto alone. Raghuveer Kancherla, Co-Founder at compliance infrastructure company Sprinto, told Coinpedia that the broader fintech regulatory environment compounds the challenge for companies operating across multiple verticals simultaneously.

“India’s fintech regulatory environment is both complex and fast-moving,” Kancherla said. “RBI, SEBI, DPDP, and emerging crypto frameworks mean the rules governing these businesses are changing in real time. For companies operating across payments, digital assets, and lending, these are multiple compliance challenges compounding simultaneously.”

He described the operational burden this creates for growing companies.

“Every new framework adds surface area. Every audit cycle creates drag. Teams trying to manage this manually are spending more time on compliance operations than on the business itself.”

Kancherla argued that the pace of regulatory change has outgrown manual compliance management entirely.

“Manual GRC was not built for this pace. Autonomous GRC is the only way to keep up by monitoring continuously, adapting in real time, and treating compliance as infrastructure rather than overhead.”

Story Ends Here

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TECHINASIA: Indian crypto exchange WazirX adds AI, futures trading

The Ethereum ecosystem witnessed the largest losses in 2024 amid a massive rise in crypto hacks.

According to a Cyvers report, the Web3 ecosystem suffered staggering financial losses in 2024, with over $6 billion drained through hacks, exploits, and cyberattacks, with Web3 hacks resulting in $2.3 billion loss.

Among the affected blockchains, Ethereum emerged as the hardest hit, accounting for 51% of these losses. Notably, as the backbone of decentralized finance (DeFi), Ethereum’s widespread adoption and liquidity made it a primary target for cybercriminals.  

Alarming Growth in Web3 Security Breaches   The numbers highlight a troubling trend. Losses soared by 40% compared to 2023, showing how hackers are evolving faster than ever. The year saw $2.3 billion siphoned from blockchain projects, exchanges, and DeFi platforms, with Ethereum users bearing the brunt.  

According to Cyvers, the quarterly breakdown showed consistent financial damage, with Q1 losses reaching $517 million, Q2 rising to $587 million and Q3 peaking at $669 million. Interestingly, in Q4 2024, losses slowed to $130 million.  

Although 2024’s total remained below the $3.78 billion record set in 2022, the upward trajectory signals worsening vulnerabilities in the Web3 space.  

Why Ethereum Was a Prime Target   Ethereum’s dominance in the DeFi ecosystem made it particularly vulnerable. Its extensive user base and massive liquidity pools presented hackers abundant opportunities. From smart contract flaws to access control weaknesses, attackers leveraged every vulnerability.  

While Ethereum suffered the most significant financial damage, other blockchains also endured heavy hits. The BNB Chain accounted for 24% of losses, while Bitcoin, XRP, and Arbitrum each faced smaller but substantial breaches.

Access Control Failures   Security lapses involving access controls were the primary culprit behind the year’s crypto losses, contributing to 81% of the stolen funds. Weak authentication and poor permission management left users and projects exposed.  

The remaining 19% stemmed from smart contract exploits. Hackers exploited coding errors to manipulate systems, drain funds, and compromise platforms. Together, these vulnerabilities showed the pressing need for better security practices across the industry.  

Major 2024 Hacks The Cyvers report also called attention to some of the most high-profile incidents of 2024. For instance, DMM Bitcoin lost $305 million, while PlayDapp saw $290 million vanish. Other notable breaches included WazirX, which lost $235 million, and Radiant Capital, which suffered a $55 million theft.  

While some funds were recovered, success rates declined sharply as the year progressed. Early 2024 saw promising recoveries, with $620 million reclaimed in Q1 and $562 million in Q2. However, this momentum faded by Q4, with only $25 million recovered during the final months.  

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Binance Delisting Sparks Panic: WRX, AKRO, BLZ Prices Crash 40%

The entity behind the WazirX exploit has liquidated a good portion of its ill-gotten gains, which analysts have noted has had a major impact on some prices.

Alex Svanevik, CEO of blockchain analytics firm Nansen, pointed out on Twitter that the entity behind the hack of Indian exchange WazirX—suggested to be a North Korean hacking group—became the top Uniswap (UNI) seller. Nansen data for UNI shows that the address in question has sold $859,514 worth of the token over the last seven days.

The @WazirXIndia Exploiter is back on the move...

In the past hour, they've moved 21.16b $BOB ($800k) and some smaller holdings that have also been sold. And a further 6.7m $CHR ($1.6m), was sent to a separate address and was sold a few minutes ago

This is after the… pic.twitter.com/L0zPf8Id0O

— Nansen 🧭 (@nansen_ai) July 22, 2024

Similarly, the presumed North Korean hacker group also topped the sale charts for Chainlink (LINK) and The Sandbox (SAND). Nansen data shows that the hacker sold over $2.77 million of Chainlink and $1.6 million of SAND over the last seven days.

Later, the firm's main account sent a tweet saying that there's now only $5 million worth of funds left in the exploiter's wallet. The remainder is mostly comprised of Celer Network (CELR), Ooki (OOKI), and Frontier (FRONT).

Market reacts to WazirX hacker's sellingDespite this, according to CoinMarketCap data, Chainlink is trading at $14.16 after seeing a 2.57% gain over the last seven days. Similarly, The Sandbox is trading at $0.3371 after seeing 3.61% worth of gains over the last seven days. Uniswap is trading at $7.91 after trading in the red for most of the last seven days—even before the hack—and lost 6.1% over the last seven days.

The same cannot be said about Push Protocol (PUSH). The token has dropped 24% over both the last seven days and 32% in the last 24 hours. It's now trading at $0.1027 after rebounding 28% from its $0.08022 low reported earlier on Monday. Nansen data shows that the WazirX hacker wallet sold $529,167 worth of PUSH over the last da—with the next top seller only having sold $11,133, highlighting the low liquidity.

Push Protocol and The Sandbox 24-hour price chart. Source: CoinMarketCapPush Protocol & The Sandbox 24-hour price chart. | Source: CoinMarketCap

The difference in impact is to be largely attributed to the different levels of liquidity. Push Protocol has a market cap of under $6.2 million and a 24-hour volume of under $4.9 million as of press time.

Hi Push Community

As you may know, WazirX exchange has been the victim of a hack that exposed several coins, and unfortunately, PUSH as well. We have traced them to this address: https://t.co/NA2ObL7eM6 exploiter of the exchange has sold 100% of the reserve of PUSH tokens… pic.twitter.com/m43ec4TrME

— Push Protocol | Push Nodes SOON (@pushprotocol) July 22, 2024

Chainlink has a market cap of nearly $8.6 billion and a volume of over $421 million, whereas The Sandbox has $767 million and $69 million respectively. Uniswap has a market cap of $4.74 billion and a volume of nearly $158 million.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

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