Update (Nov. 12): Unocoin has since published a fuller incident update saying unauthorised activity was first detected on Nov. 6 and that on Nov. 12 it found outgoing transactions from an Ethereum address in its BitGo wallet setup. It has not said how much moved. Read our follow-up.
Unocoin, the Bengaluru exchange that calls itself India’s oldest, says crypto withdrawals on its platform were already switched off before it found unauthorised access to its servers on Nov. 9. User logins have been disabled since that discovery, and on Thursday the exchange told customers there is no confirmed timeline for bringing services back. It continues to say no crypto has been lost.
What Unocoin has said
The exchange’s only formal statement is a Nov. 9 security update, also posted on X. It says Unocoin identified unauthorised access to its servers that day, disabled user logins as a precaution, and is investigating and working on remediation. “We want to clearly communicate that no crypto funds have been lost in this incident,” the post says. Services will resume once the investigation and security work are complete, and Unocoin said it would share its findings in due course.
Since then the exchange has spoken mostly through replies to frustrated users. On Thursday it answered a user who said withdrawals had stopped before Nov. 1. “Prior to November 9, only crypto withdrawal services were temporarily disabled due to ongoing system maintenance,” Unocoin said in that reply, adding that logins were suspended only after the unauthorised access was found. It did not say when the withdrawal pause began. “Currently, there is no confirmed timeline for the resumption of services,” it told another user the same morning.
That clarification matters for anyone trying to work out how long their coins have been stuck. Users replying to the exchange said crypto withdrawals were unavailable before the breach, and one said a withdrawal request filed on Oct. 29 was still pending. Unocoin has not said whether the maintenance that paused withdrawals is connected to the server access it found later.
The website still says “scheduled maintenance”
When we checked on Thursday, unocoin.com loaded a holding page headed “Scheduled Maintenance.” It says the site is undergoing scheduled server maintenance to improve performance, stability and security. The page does not mention the unauthorised access. Earlier in the day, crypto.news reported the site was returning a gateway time-out error.
The 81,000 empty addresses
The question hanging over the exchange comes from on-chain data. Onchain Lens said on Thursday that Arkham Intelligence shows $0 in holdings across the 81,000 addresses it attributes to Unocoin, and that it was examining on-chain movements to work out what happened.
That figure needs care. Exchanges routinely sweep customer deposit addresses into hot and cold wallets, and Arkham can only total the addresses it has labelled. A zero balance across tagged addresses can mean funds moved to wallets nobody has labelled yet, a normal consolidation, or a loss. It does not settle which. Unocoin has not addressed the Arkham data publicly and has not published any wallet addresses or balances since the incident.
Why the details matter
Indian users have been through this before. WazirX halted withdrawals in July 2024 after losing about $230 million from one of its multisig wallets, TechCrunch reported. A year later CoinDCX lost about $44 million from an internal operational account and said in its incident report that customer assets were untouched and the loss would be covered from its treasury.
Those two cases set a template: a figure for what was taken, a wallet named as the source, and a statement on who bears the loss. Unocoin has so far given none of the three. It says it is registered with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit as a reporting entity under the anti-money laundering law, which brings reporting duties but does not create a deposit guarantee for crypto held on the platform.
Freezing access on suspicion is not unusual. South Korea’s financial regulator said this week it would explicitly allow exchanges to halt withdrawals when a hack is only suspected, as we covered in our report on the FSC’s no-action letter. The Korean guideline pairs that power with a duty to report intrusions to the authorities quickly.
What to watch
The next useful update from Unocoin would include when the crypto withdrawal pause started and why, whether any wallet keys or customer data sat on the servers that were accessed, and a date for restoring logins. Until then, the company’s blog and its X account are the only official channels. Users should be wary of anyone offering to recover funds or asking for passwords or one-time codes.
FAQ
Has Unocoin been hacked?
Unocoin says it found unauthorised access to its servers on Nov. 9 and that no crypto funds were lost. It has not said how the attacker got in or what was accessed.
Can Unocoin users withdraw crypto?
No. Logins are disabled, and Unocoin says crypto withdrawals were already paused for maintenance before Nov. 9. It has given no timeline for resuming services.
Does the Arkham $0 balance mean funds are gone?
Not on its own. Exchanges sweep deposit addresses, so a zero balance on labelled addresses can reflect funds moved elsewhere. Unocoin has not published wallet data either way.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
