WazirX announces compensation for users who lost money amid 'Doge killer' trading frenzy

WazirX CEO Nishchal Shetty aid that the company would 'AIRDROP WRX' equivalent to the loss incurred by the users. [Image: Shutterstock]

Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX has announced measures to compensate its users who bought the meme currency Shiba Inu (SHIB) after it was listed on the exchange on May 13 at a price higher than its actual value.

On the same day, Vitalik Buterin, founder of the Ethereum blockchain donated 500 Ether and over 50 trillion SHIB worth around $1.14 billion at the time of the transaction, to India's COVID-Crypto Relief Fund, set up by Indian tech entrepreneur Sandeep Nailwal.

The meme cryptocurrency token fell below Rs 1 within an hour after its listing. Reportedly, the price of SHIB at the time of listing was $0.00002 which converted to nearly Rs 0.0016. However, WazirX had listed the price at Rs 3. Many users complained of the difference in price after they had already bought the meme currency also known as the "Doge killer" in urgency, without checking the actual listed price.

I lost 27k on wazirx exchange due to high price listing of #shibainu We just want a satisfactory statement from @WazirXIndia and @NischalShetty on this issue

PLZ resolve our prblm don’t break the trust of users #WazirXScam#NischalReply#shibainu#cryptocurrencypic.twitter.com/BIDmhcq2Ev — Muhib Ish (@muhib_ish) May 15, 2021

"When SHIB market went live, its deposits and withdrawals took longer to go live due to a misconfiguration. There was also a delay in our liquidity provider bringing in enough liquidity, and that led to a liquidity crunch in SHIB market. With more people trading, SHIB prices climbed up due to the lack of liquidity," WazirX explained in a blog post.

"Very quickly, our team discovered this misconfiguration, turned on SHIB deposits and withdrawals, and SHIB price auto-adjusted based on the new deposits coming in from our customers," it added.

Following the fiasco, Nischal Shetty, Founder and CEO of WazirX India, took to Twitter to announce the WRX Airdrop program for those "who bought SHIB at exceptionally high price and did not sell". He said that the company would 'AIRDROP WRX' equivalent to the loss incurred by the users.

Day 927 Announcing WRX Airdrop program for users who bought SHIB at exceptionally high price & did not sell. WazirX is about trust & we have decided to help our users. We will AIRDROP WRX equivalent to your loss! Details soon Plz share & RT #WazirXCares#IndiaWantsCrypto — Nischal (WazirX) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) May 16, 2021

Such users will receive WazirX utility tokens over the next four months. The company will 'airdrop' the tokens equivalent to 25 percent of the loss incurred, every month for the next four months. "We will be using WRX that is collected as part of trading fees. No WRX will be specially unlocked or used for this airdrop program," Shetty added.

With the rapidly increasing crypto craze in the country, several people are jumping on the crypto bandwagon. SHIB, the self-proclaimed "dogecoin killer" was created in August 2020 by someone who uses the name Ryoshi. It is modelled after Dogecoin and has a market capitalisation of over Rs 457 billion, according to Coinbase, at the time of writing this article.