India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDCX, has confirmed that hackers drained roughly $44m from one of its internal operational accounts in a weekend cyber-attack, prompting the platform to launch what it calls a record recovery bounty and to reassure millions of customers that their funds remain safe.
CoinDCX’s co-founder and CEO, Sumit Gupta, addressed the incident in a post on X, stating, “The incident was quickly contained by isolating the affected operational account.”
The breach, discovered on Saturday 19 July, targeted an internal account used exclusively to provide liquidity on a partner exchange, according to CoinDCX executives. The company said the account was quickly isolated and that the compromise did not touch segregated customer wallets held in cold storage.
He emphasised that customer wallets, stored in secure cold storage, were unaffected. “Our operational accounts are segregated from customer wallets, limiting the exposure to this specific account,” Gupta added.
Blockchain tracing shows the stolen assets moved across chains. Investigators say funds were routed through Solana–Ethereum bridges and at one stage consolidated into about 155,830 SOL (≈$27.6m) and 4,443 ETH (≈$15.7m) before further movement. Early forensic snapshots also referenced large transfers of dollar‑pegged stablecoins (USDC and USDT), underscoring the complexity of multi‑chain laundering now common in crypto thefts.
In an aggressive bid to claw back the money and smoke out the attackers, CoinDCX has rolled out a Recovery Bounty Programme that could pay as much as $11m or up to 25% of any assets successfully returned to white‑hat hackers, investigators and even the perpetrators should they cooperate. The initiative, which the company says is the largest of its kind in India, invites tips that lead to freezing, tracing or recovering the crypto haul.
CoinDCX insists it is financially strong enough to absorb the loss. Customer trading, deposits and rupee withdrawals have continued; the exchange said it processed more than 31,000 withdrawal requests in the first 24 hours after news of the hack and cleared more than 98% of them. Executives reiterated that the platform’s reserves are fully backed 1:1 and that treasury funds, not user assets, will cover the hit.
Scale matters here. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Mumbai, CoinDCX says it serves more than 16 million users and handled about $492m in spot trading volume in May 2025, making it a bellwether for India’s retail crypto participation. The exchange is registered with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit, underscoring its role in an industry still awaiting comprehensive regulation.
Some users reported temporary glitches loading account portfolios as traffic spiked after the disclosure, and CoinDCX briefly paused its Web3 mode feature as a precaution before restoring access to more than 50,000 DeFi tokens. The company said additional server capacity was provisioned and that core trading and fiat rails remained available throughout.
Regulators and investigators are now involved. CoinDCX reported the incident to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT‑In) on 19 July and is working with global cybersecurity firms, blockchain forensics specialists and partner exchanges to track the stolen tokens and freeze them where possible. The company has promised to publish forensic findings as they emerge.
The episode lands amid a bruising year for digital‑asset security globally. Chainalysis data cited by security researchers shows more than $2bn in crypto has been stolen worldwide so far in 2025, already outpacing 2024. Industry trackers note that centralised exchanges accounted for more than 65% of reported losses in the second quarter of 2024 a reminder that even established platforms remain lucrative targets.
Policy pressure is building. Industry figures, including Polygon Labs’ Aishwary Gupta, argue India needs clearer rules on breach disclosure, infrastructure standards, key management and hot‑wallet exposure so exchanges can innovate without leaving customers exposed. A new discussion draft known as the COINS Act has been floated by policy groups as one potential framework.
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