CoinDCX CEO Denies Reports of a $900M Acquisition by Coinbase

CoinDCX CEO Sumit Gupta has refuted rumors of a potential $900 million purchase of the platform by Coinbase.

The development follows a $44 million crypto hack that affected the Indian exchange two weeks ago.

$900M Coinbase Deal

On Monday, an Indian news outlet reported that Coinbase was in “advanced discussions” to acquire CoinDCX. Citing two anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the article had alleged that the deal would be worth just under $900 million, a 60% discount from its $2.2 billion valuation from three years ago.

However, CEO Gupta has since disproved the news via a July 29 X post: “Ignore the rumours! CoinDCX is ‘super focused’ on building for India’s crypto story and not up for sale!” He added that he will share more details on the exchange’s plans very soon.

Founded in 2018 by Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal, CoinDCX became India’s first crypto unicorn after being valued at $2.2 billion in 2022. The platform is backed by global heavyweights including Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, and B Capital Group.

The now-debunked reports had claimed that Coinbase views the acquisition as a strategic investment to re-enter and expand in the Indian crypto market following its exit in 2023 due to regulatory challenges.

The exchange paused UPI payments and trading services shortly after launching in India, due to pressure from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The company later stopped services for the region’s users in 2023, but did not officially say it was leaving the country. Following its registration with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in March, Coinbase now has permission to offer crypto services in India under local rules.

CoinDCX $44M Breach

On July 19, CoinCDX fell victim to a $44.2 million security breach that targeted one of its internal operational wallets used for liquidity management.

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT was the first to raise an alarm about suspicious outflows nearly 17 hours before the firm issued a public statement. According to the on-chain sleuth, the attackers drained the wallet’s USDC and USDT tokens, then laundered the funds using Solana-Ethereum bridges and Tornado Cash.

Gupta later assured users that the platform’s security systems ensured all customer funds remained unaffected and secure in offline cold storage. He explained that the incident was caused by a sophisticated server breach. Last week, CoinDCX also launched a recovery bounty program, offering white hat hackers up to 25% of any funds they successfully help trace and recover.