India’s CoinDCX Confirms $16 Million Loss Days After CEO Called It a ‘False Alarm’
Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX has admitted losing approximately $16 million after an internal process failed to sweep customer deposits from retired wallets, reversing CEO Sumit Gupta's earlier claim that breach reports were a 'false alarm.'
The Mumbai-based exchange revealed in a blog post that 15.99 million USDT was drained from its infrastructure, though it emphasized that customer funds remain safe and the company has absorbed the loss itself. The funds were moved on the Tron network on October 21, with the company tracing the incident to a failure in an internal process designed to transfer customer deposits from wallets it had retired following a significant hack in 2025.
CEO's Reversal
The admission marks an embarrassing reversal for Gupta, who had initially pushed back against reports of a breach. When blockchain researchers and Arkham tracker first flagged suspicious outflows, the CEO took to X (formerly Twitter) to claim that CoinDCX's wallets were 'not breached' and that the flagged activity was merely a 'false alarm' related to compromised addresses from July 2025.
Withdraw all funds from CoinDCX if you value your assets. Its co-founders are clowns running a circus. They publicly and privately denied a theft of its assets occurred meaning they straight up lied or are negligently incompetent. Later they disclosed the $16M theft and…
Previous Incidents
This latest loss compounds a tumultuous period for CoinDCX, one of India's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The company previously suffered a roughly $44 million hack in July 2025, which it attributed to a server breach. That incident led to a bounty hunt for the stolen funds and later resulted in the arrest of an employee. Together, the two breaches have brought the exchange's total losses to nearly $60 million.
The retired wallets at the center of this new incident were a legacy of the 2025 breach, addresses that the exchange had stopped using but continued to receive residual deposits. The failure of an automated transfer system to clear these funds left them vulnerable to the attack.
Company Response
CoinDCX has faced additional challenges this year, including fraud and impersonation-scam allegations that prompted a police probe. The exchange also denied reports of acquisition talks with Coinbase following the 2025 hack, though Coinbase has separately pursued expansion across South Asia and the Middle East. The company stated it would share further details as its investigation continues, reiterating that user balances remain unaffected.
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