⏮ What WazirX’s EXIT means for Indian crypto

Namaste, this is your favourite doodhwala, we always cycle past your house every morning yelling “Doodh le loo, taaza aur unfunny doodh le looooooo.”

Before we get into what we’re pedaling today, we wanna help you make some web3 plans for this week:

→ 0x Breakfast (happening all ova the country)

→ Supermeet Mumbai

Check + Register for these 🔥 events here 👇

Let’s cycle through today:

• What WazirX EXIT means for Indian crypto 😭

• Return of the $20 million Hacker

• Still fresh doodh: Paedophilia and Tinder

• Taaza Tweet of the day

Let’s get some 💪

😡 What WazirX’s layoffs means for Indian crypto  

Earlier this week, WazirX said it laid off about 40% of its workforce.

This is a BIGG EFFING deal given the state of the crypto market + regulations imposed on Indian crypto exchanges.

And we wanna talk about this. 😡

Why?

We’ll be honest, this feels like a watershed moment for Indian crypto.

We’ll be honest-er, we don’t know what a watershed moment means. But it sounded fancy OKAY.

This is what the Cambridge dic (short for dictionary!!) said:

An event or period that’s important because it represents a big change and the start of new developments

Okay, so why is WazirX’s layoffs a BIG DEAL?

The exchange said “3 unique problems” led to the layoffs:

1️⃣ taxes2️⃣ regulations3️⃣ banking access🍼 lack of fun crypto content

And this Tax + Regulation + Banking access probs are like the three worse villains for any exchange.

Let’s look at how these 3 unique problems affect exchanges like WazirX and their main users — traders

Taxes + Regulations

The govt imposed a 30% tax on any profits made on crypto trading! And there is no diff between short-term profits and long-term profits.

(btw, for stock trading, the short-term capital gains tax is 15% and the long-term capital gains tax is 10%)

The govt also imposed a 1% TDS on crypto trading.

That means when you buy, sell, or swap crypto you have to pay 1% to the govt as tax regardless if you make a 10x profit or a -99% loss.

🤡

Banking access

Oh, in case you haven’t noticed — there is no easy way of transferring INR from:

Bank account → Crypto exchange account → To trade crypto

In fact, most exchanges don’t even have an INR deposit option.

Why?

Because banks (fearing the government) simply don’t want to work with crypto exchanges.

🤡

Because of this:

1️⃣ traders can't deposit INR to make traders

2️⃣ traders lost 1% on each trade as TDS

3️⃣ traders will pay 30% on each profitable trade

Here’s what an Indian trader told the doodhwala about this.

We’ve replaced some unsavoury words with ❌, you can guess what they are.

And the effect of this sentiment is clear on the trading vols of exchanges.

Take a look at the trading vol on WazirX (other exchanges saw the same fate) 💔

Keep in mind 2 important dates:

• 1st February — 30% capital gains tax + TDS announced

• 1st July — TDS implemented on crypto trades

Rn it’s WazirX laying off employees, but this volume drop is 100% the case with other exchanges.

We’ve heard most 🇮🇳 exchanges are struggling as well, they’re cutting unnecessary spends, and freezing hiring

We hope crypto exchanges survive and for this regulations need to ease up. 🤞

Message FROM our Partners 

  Sign up for Lumos Labs’ 👉 upcoming BUIDL for web3 Hackathon!  

⏮ Return of the $20 million Hacker 

Most people think hackers are like this dude:

But sometimes, hackers are like this dude:

One example of a goodie hacker, if you can call this dude one, is Transit Swap hacker.

◀️ Flashback time ◀️

Transit Swap is a cross-chain decentralized exchange.

A cross cross-chain decentralized exchange is a DeFi protocol that allows you to swap funds between blockchains by using the liquidity of decentralized exchanges.

Basically, if you have funds:

→ USDC on Ethereum

and you want to buy

→ BNB on Binance Smart Chain

a cross-chain decentralized exchange will make the swap and the bridge for you in one transaction for a fee.

This is what Transit Swap offers

But last week, a hacker swooped in and stole $21 million (Rs 171 crore), due to a bug in Transit Swap’s code.

⏩ Flashback ova ⏩

After the hack two things happened:

Thing #1: Hacker got hacked!

The hacker lost $1 million (Rs 8 crore) to a Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot (a bot that captures excess value from the slippage on on-chain transactions).

Basically, a bot saw that Transit Swap’s funds were being pulled.

And before the hacker got his hacky hands on the funds, the MEV bot swooped in and stole $1 million from the hacker.

Thing #2: Transit Swap called its pull

Transit Swap worked with a few crypto security companies to get the hacker’s:

• email ID

• IP-address

• on-chain transaction

• favourite CRYPTO newsletter (it’s the doodhwala!!)

When the hacker found out Transit Swap was onto him + they know his geo-location, he was SHOOK.

The hacker wasn’t taking any chances and sent back 70% of the stolen funds, that’s $15 million (Rs 120 crore).

We really don’t know what happened to the rest.

Maybe the hacker kept $5 million as finder’s fee. 🤣

Oh well, at least everyone’s winning here. Transit Swap got most of their funds back, the MEV bot made $1 million, the hacker pocked a chill $5 million.

But most of all — you got an entertaining story outta it?

So, why not entertain your friends by sharing the doodhwala? 👀

🍼 Still fresh doodh: Paedophilia 🤝 Tinder  

We’re world record holders you see. Our milk never NEVER expires.

Wanna try?

In case you missed out because of your bizzeee bizzeee week, check out these still taaza but still unfunny news from ⏮ week:

✍️ Is ETH dead after the merge? Nope, here’s why.

✍️ Punk season OVA? Lol, it’s just getting started.

✍️ Polygon is entering CeFi! Here’s why it’s a BD.

🎙 CONVO: Check out our dope convo with Ayush Ranjan, the CEO of Huddle01. He’s building a Zoom and a Tinder on the blockchain.

♨️ Taaza Tweet of the day  

If you want more doodh then, be sure to follow our Twitter (@DoodhwalaDaily)

That’s all for today bhaiyo aur bheno! Naale Sigona!

Aakash "Dahi Cheeni" Athawasya & Arvind "Doodh Peda" Krishna

Yo! Our legal and financial advisors (aka our good ol’ conscience) have asked us to add this boring disclaimer.

None of what you read here is financial advice. We aren’t here to get you to buy or sell a crypto. We’re only here to tell you what’s up in crypto today and make you laugh. So, if you screwed up on a trade, that’s on you G. Stay safe in the markets.