It has been over 5 days since India’s largest Cryptocurrency exchange Koinex shut down. Users have been moving their funds to different exchanges. We followed the outgoing transactions on XRP and XLM Ledger
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Following the trail of XRP
XRP is undoubtedly one of the easiest cryptocurrency asset to track. All exchanges have one or two addresses and all the users of the exchanges have unique tags. That makes tracking the movement of XRP in and out of an exchange very easy.
Once again we called in Smit Khakhkhar to help us out in tracking outgoing XRP transactions from Koinex. Why? To assess the impact of WazirX, Bitbns, CoinDCX’s various schemes to woo Koinex users.
At about 11:59 PM IST on July 01, 2019, we extracted the data on XRP and XLM outgoing transactions.
A total of 12405 XRP outgoing transactions were made from Koinex’s XRP wallet totalling 9620155 XRP. Where was it sent to? Did the lucrative offers from other exchanges make any difference? Let us find out.
Where are Koinex users sending their XRP?
Of all the major Indian exchanges I had again hoped the biggest chunk would be going to WazirX and Bitbns. However, history repeated itself from Coindelta’s shutdown, unsurprisingly a whopping 37.26% of outgoing XRPs were sent to Binance, followed by Bitbns and WazirX receiving a 15.82% and 10.9% respectively.
Binance received 35.84 lakh XRP. Bitbns received 15.22 Lakh XRP. WazirX received 10.48 lakh XRP. Surprisingly, CoinDCX which is offering 2% cashback on deposits from Koinex users received only 1.9% of the total XRP withdrawals. The remaining XRP went to exchanges like, Coinbase pro, Bitfinex, Bittrex and several other.
One more astonishing thing is ~4% XRP were sent to Zebpay Wallet. Zebpay’s exchange was closed almost a year ago but the wallet service is still open to Indian users.
Where are Koinex users sending their XLM?
Along with XRP, we also tracked XLM (Stellar) coins moving out of Koinex. It is relatively easy to track Stellar given its properties of singular address with multiple memos for distinguishing identities.
Binance led the charts by receiving over 40% XLM going out of Koinex. Bitbns and WazirX followed with 22.88% and 19.27% respectively. Coinbase pro received 5.47% of the total outgoing XLM, while the rest was dividing in multiple wallets and exchanges.
Why Binance – Trust or Lack of Awareness?
On April 01, 2019 when CoinDelta users were transferring their funds out of the exchange after its shut down, we noticed most of the funds were going to Binance followed by Koinex.
Today, five days after Koinex Shut Down, we are seeing even more percentage of funds moving to Binance instead of Indian exchanges like WazirX, Bitbns or CoinDCX. This, despite their various cashback, deposit bonus and fee refund offers.
The situation demands a question, are the users simply trusting Binance more over Indian exchanges or just unaware that there are other options available?
The most shocking of the observation from the data is that 4% XRP were actually sent to Zebpay wallets.
WazirX has already launched its P2P exchange in Ukraine and Indonesia. Bitbns is all set to launch in UAE. Bain capital has invested in CoinDCX. Indian exchanges, despite all odds are fighting to survive, to grow and yet, Binance is taking the bigger piece of the pie right under their nose.
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