CoinDCX offers up to 25% bounty on recovered funds after $44 million crypto theft

Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX on Monday announced a bounty programme offering up to 25% of recovered funds as a reward for information leading to the retrieval of assets stolen in a recent hack and identification of the culprits.

The theft, involving about $44.2 million (₹378 crore) from the exchange’s treasury reserves, was detected on July 19 after unauthorised access to one of its operational accounts on a partner platform.

CoinDCX co-founders Sumit Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal assured that the customer funds were unaffected as the losses were being absorbed entirely by the company.

Up to "25 per cent of all successfully recovered funds will be awarded to partners who play an active role in retrieving the stolen crypto in the incident and assist in the identification and conviction of the attackers.

"Bounty Pool Potential: Up to USD 11 million in value in the scenario of a full recovery," CoinDCX said in a statement.

The company described the hack as a sophisticated server breach targeting an internal wallet used for liquidity provisioning. The incident was first flagged by blockchain investigator ZachXBT.

"Today, one of our internal operational accounts -- used only for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange -- was compromised due to a sophisticated server breach. I confirm that the CoinDCX wallets used to store customer assets are not impacted and are completely safe. This won’t cause any loss to our customers. CoinDCX will be bearing the full amount," Gupta said.

"The total amount lost was USD 44Mn out of our treasury assets. Coindcx Treasury will be bearing these losses," Khandelwal wrote.

Following the disclosure, users rushed to check balances, temporarily overwhelming CoinDCX’s portfolio APIs, although services have since been restored.

India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has been informed, and two global security agencies are conducting forensic investigations. CoinDCX said its trading, INR deposits, and withdrawals remain operational.