WazirX Hack Sends SHIB, WRX Tumbling as Bitcoin, Tether Trade at Massive Discount

Cryptocurrencies stolen in a malicious attack at Indian exchange WazirX early Thursday, as well as the platform’s native token, are experiencing significant losses in their market values after the hack drained roughly 50% of the exchange’s reserves.
The exchange has temporarily paused withdrawals.
WazirX’s WRX token is trading 15% lower at just over 14 cents, according to Coingecko data. The rupee-denominated price has slumped more than 25% since the exchange confirmed the hack that saw the attacker walk away with $230 million in customer funds, including $100 million in shiba inu (SHIB). The attacker also drained $52 million in ether (ETH), $11 million in MATIC and $6 million in PEPE.
Since then, SHIB has lost over 6% in market value in U.S. dollar terms while trading 16% lower in rupee terms amid reports the hacker is liquidating the coins. Blockchain data suggests the attacker is offloading SHIB, putting downward pressure on its market value.
Other tokens have held relatively steady in dollar terms while suffering significant losses in the exchange’s INR pairs.
Notably, the bitcoin-rupee (BTC/INR) pair has declined by 11% to 5.1 million rupees ($60,945), trading at a massive discount to prices on rival exchange CoinDCX, where the cryptocurrency changed hands at 5.7 million rupees. BTC’s global average dollar-denominated price traded 1% higher on the day at $61,800. The largest cryptocurrency by market value is priced around $64,900 according to CoinDesk Indices data.
Meanwhile, the USDT-INR pair (USDT) on WazirX has slipped by 8%.
The discounts in BTC, USDT and other cryptocurrencies on WazirX likely reflect panic selling by investors and the rush for fiat/cash in the wake of the hack.
Edited by Sheldon Reback.
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Omkar Godbole is a Co-Managing Editor on CoinDesk’s Markets team.