CoinDCX offers up to 25% recovery bounty after $44.2 mn crypto theft
New Delhi, Jul 21, 2025
CoinDCX offers up to 25% bounty after $44.2 mn theft. Firm seeks white-hat help in crypto recovery, amid rising cyberattacks on Indian exchanges
Cryptocurrency exchange platform CoinDCX has unveiled a recovery bounty initiative after a security breach that led to the theft of $44.2 million (around ₹378 crore) from its treasury. The platform will offer up to 25 per cent of recovered funds as a reward to those who assist in retrieving the stolen assets and identifying the culprits.
The CoinDCX Recovery Bounty Programme, announced on Monday, invites ethical hackers, white-hat researchers, and ecosystem partners to collaborate in the investigation. The company said the aim is not only to recover funds but also to “rally the Web3 community in the fight against cybercrime”.
According to the statement, the potential bounty pool could amount to as much as $11 million, provided full recovery is achieved.
Internal account breach, not customer wallets
The breach, which was announced on Saturday (July 19), involved unauthorised access to one of CoinDCX’s operational accounts used for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange. Co-founder and CEO Sumit Gupta clarified that the compromised account was isolated and that customer funds were never at risk.
“The affected operational account is segregated from customer wallets. The entire loss will be absorbed by us using our treasury reserves,” said Gupta in a post on X.
Co-founder Neeraj Khandelwal echoed the reassurance, saying, “Our first and foremost objective throughout the day has been to secure assets. Coindcx Treasury will be bearing these losses.”
Funds routed via Solana and Ethereum
Preliminary investigations revealed that the stolen assets were moved through Solana-Ethereum bridges and later consolidated into 4,443 ETH (roughly $15.7 million) and 155,830 SOL (valued at $27.6 million). These funds are currently dormant, and CoinDCX is working with partners to freeze and recover them.
As part of its response, the firm is collaborating with global cybersecurity experts, CERT-In (India’s Computer Emergency Response Team), and partner exchanges. A detailed forensic report will be made public upon completion of the investigation.
Following the attack, users reported issues accessing their portfolios, which CoinDCX attributed to server load caused by increased traffic. The firm has since scaled its server capacity, and access has been restored.
“We have significantly enhanced server capacity to serve users better,” Khandelwal said in a follow-up post.
Part of a larger pattern?
The CoinDCX incident follows a similar attack on WazirX, another Indian exchange, which suffered a $230–235 million breach in July 2024. In that case, WazirX proposed a socialised loss solution that returned only partial funds to users, drawing criticism from the crypto community.
Founded in 2018, CoinDCX claims to have over 16 million users and recorded $492 million in spot trading volume in May 2025, with Bitcoin and Ethereum leading trades.
CoinDCX has said that the breach is a moment of reckoning, not retreat. “Every security incident is a learning experience. We will come out stronger and work with the community to secure the industry,” said Gupta.
[The Business Standard]
