Indian Crypto Exchange BitBNS Says Law Enforcement Advised Against Making Hack Public

Indian Crypto Exchange BitBNS didn't make a Feb. 1, 2022 $7.5 million hack public to its users and instead told them it was "system maintenance" because law enforcement authorities advised them against it, BitBNS CEO Gaurav Dahake said during an hour-long Ask Me Anything (AMA) session.

CoinDesk has not been able to verify the claim independently with law enforcement, and neither Dahake nor BitBNS has not responded to our requests for comments.

"We immediately contacted law enforcement," after the hack, said Dahake, who also claimed to "have proper logs and case IDs," to support this.

The hack was first uncovered and made public by prominent crypto sleuth ZachXBT, with a tweet on Wednesday asking his followers to "call out the crypto exchange" for hiding the incident from users.

Let’s call out the crypto exchange @bitbns for hiding a $7.5m hack from their users on February 1 2022 and then proceeding to tell them it was “system maintenance”

0x24f361E1eeEdF29fd6D724C9393132D61c51ebB1 pic.twitter.com/a3aBqlgW0z

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) February 28, 2023

"Law enforcement advised us that the users should be educated about the incident only after the investigation is completed or reaches a dead end," Dahake said while adding that some funds were recovered with the help of authorities and other exchanges.

Dahake invited others to help with the case and said he had "sort of spoke" with ZachXBT in the interest of trying "to weed out the bad actors."

The exchange remains live. "As long as it is legal to run the exchange, we will continue to keep serving the users," Dahake said.

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