After WazirX Hack, Pi42 Offers ‘Safer’ Crypto Trading in India

In the wake of WazirX’s $230 million security breach, the newly launched Pi42, India’s first crypto perpetuals platform, is leaning on its focus to safety.

Co-founded by WazirX’s own Nischal Shetty and Avinash Shekhar, Pi42 wants to distinguish itself as handling only Indian Rupees (INR) and offer crypto-INR futures trading with no direct crypto custody. The platform has set itself up with a long-term goal to reach 20 million Indian crypto investors.

Shekhar addressed about the safety of customer deposits on the exchange, adding that the firm does not keep the digital assets of the customers with them. However, during the “Ask Me Anything,” session, Shekar was seen dodging the questions related to WazirX halting withdrawals and added:

“They are two totally different companies and in terms of safety, we do not deal in crypto. We don’t keep customer’s crypto with us, what we have is customer’s Indian Rupees (INR) and obviously, we use Indian bank accounts for that.”

According to the Pi42 executive, his platform is “significantly safer than other crypto exchanges in India” since they do not deal directly with the customer assets and are only involved with futures trading. However, the comments from Shekhar were deemed hypocritical since both WazirX and Pi42 share the same co-founder, Nischal Shetty.

X users wondered how one exchange can be “safer” than the other when both the platforms have the same executive running things in the background. Interestingly, as explained in a previous report, WazirX’s Safe Multisig wallet on Ethereum was compromised and Shetty continued to delay the timeline of a solution for the users.

It is important to note that Pi42 believes that despite the increased interest the crypto market sees in India, there are “very limited opportunities” for Indian investors to participate in the crypto derivatives trading.