The sudden spat between Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhou and WazirX founder and CEO Nischal Shetty started after the Enforcement Directorate (ED), in a statement on August 5, 2022, stated that WazirX was giving contradictory and ambiguous answers to evade oversight by Indian regulatory agencies.
Zhao, however, disassociated Binance from WazirX last week in a tweet, writing, “Binance does not own any equity in Zanmai Labs, the company running WazirX and created by the original founders… This acquisition (deal) was never finished. At any point in time, Binance has never owned any shares of Zanmai Labs, the company that runs WazirX.
In November 2019, over two years prior, Binance declared that it has bought WazirX. After the acquisition announcement, neither Binance nor WazirX made any other statements regarding the situation, which led to the widespread belief that Binance had actually acquired WazirX. WazirX was even referred to in links that Zhao tweeted as a “Binance-owned Indian crypto exchange.”