WazirX bets on AI, futures trading to fuel comeback after $235-million hack

Crypto exchange WazirX is betting on artificial intelligence-powered products, futures trading and an enhanced customer experience to drive growth as it seeks to regain market share following its court-approved restructuring after last year's $235 million cyber attack.

Founder Nischal Shetty said the exchange is preparing to launch "WazirX AI", an artificial intelligence assistant that will allow users to interact with the platform through natural language commands rather than navigating traditional trading interfaces.

"I think that's the future, where instead of trying to learn how a trading interface operates, where the stop losses are, how do you fill up a form... I think the more natural way of trading for people will be where you just instruct your AI to do things for you, and it does it," Shetty said.


The AI tool is expected to help users execute trades, conduct research, analyse market sentiment and evaluate investment opportunities. Users could, for instance, instruct the assistant to buy Bitcoin after a 5 per cent price decline, without manually calculating price levels or configuring trading parameters.

"It's just so much more natural to work with AI," Shetty said.

According to Shetty, the assistant could also help investors validate claims circulating on social media and other online forums before making investment decisions.

"A lot of traders lose money because they panic, or because they make a decision... seeing a random post online by some random person saying this token will go up by x percentage, and they go and buy. Well, now you can treat them as signals -- but you can ask AI is this true, or is there enough data to back this claim? And then take a decision," he said.

The exchange has also introduced WazirX ZERO, a subscription-based trading model that allows users to trade more than 300 tokens for a fixed monthly fee of Rs 99, eliminating per-trade transaction charges.

In June, it launched futures trading with maker fees of 0.02 per cent and taker fees of 0.04 per cent, with no volume thresholds.

Shetty said generating profits remains the company's top priority as it seeks to compensate creditors under its restructuring plan.

"The number one priority for us is generating profits so we can distribute it to our creditors. That is the ultimate goal, it is what we are focusing on," he said. "We're also working on staking that helps people get yield on their existing assets."

WazirX resumed operations in October after the Singapore High Court approved its restructuring plan following the cyber attack. Under the plan, users received 85 per cent of their balances within 10 days of the exchange's restart, with the remaining claims to be distributed over three years.

Shetty said the company's focus has since shifted from redistributing user funds to rebuilding the business and restoring trust through product innovation and improved customer support.

WazirX currently holds about 8-10 per cent of the domestic crypto trading market, according to Shetty, who said the platform records daily trading volumes worth millions of dollars. The exchange aims to eventually regain the more than 50 per cent market share it once commanded.

"When we launched in 2018 we were the eighth or the 10th exchange, and it took us about four years to reach number one position," Shetty said.

"There are mature players now, a larger ecosystem, but we are pretty confident that if we focus on the product and the customer service as we've done before, we will be able to break through and become the largest again."

Shetty said WazirX's recovery remains unusual in the crypto industry, where exchanges hit by attacks of similar scale have often failed to resume operations.

"I don't think there is any precedent for something like this. Exchanges that have had attacks of the magnitudes like ours have usually wound down and been unable to restructure and restart," he said.

"We are probably one of those rare situations where we've restarted with the objective of how do you earn back the 15 per cent and distribute that back to all our creditors."