WazirX volumes top $350mn despite outage, flat crypto trading
2 min read 06 Apr 2021, 02:27 PM ISTLate on Sunday, Binance-owned WazirX had reported $270 million in 24-hour trading volume as it witnessed a surge in incoming traffic on the platform
PremiumTrading volume on WazirX, India’s largest crypto exchange, topped the $350-million level for the first time on Monday, even as the bourse witnessed outage over the weekend and prices of top cryptocurrencies traded flat over the past few sessions.
Late on Sunday, Binance-owned WazirX had reported $270 million in 24-hour trading volume. The company witnessed a surge in incoming traffic on the platform.
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“We have scaling systems in place, which start creating new server instances to accommodate new users. To create new servers, our scaling system relies on several components, one of which is provided by a third-party service provider. Due to unprecedented traffic, we hit an internal rate limit with our service provider, leading to failure in creating new servers, and choking of our existing servers," said Nischal Shetty, chief executive officer, WazirX.
The issue, which was first reported late on Sunday, was finally resolved around 5.30 am IST on Monday.
On Monday, the company said it hit $350 million in 24-hour trading volume. In comparison, the 24-hour trading volume on the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, was about $30 billion on Monday, while WazirX’s peer CoinDcx had a trading volume of $32 million, according to CoinMarketCap.
“Global news and developments, such as MicroStrategy, Visa, MasterCard and Tesla getting involved in crypto, have given a boost to crypto adoption in India. There is a huge surge in new signups and trading volume due to the fact that crypto is becoming a popular concept in India now," Shetty added.
According to Shetty, another key factor that has been driving investors towards crypto currencies is regulatory easing in India. “With the Parliament session over, it must have encouraged several large buyers to participate in crypto leading to a supply crunch," he said.
The company has been working on its scaling systems and has been building systems in place to ensure that any issue in one part of a service does not affect the rest of its services.
Trading volumes on crypto exchanges as well as the count of investors has been rising in India despite concerns of ban over crypto trading.
For the full financial year, trading volume during the financial year 2020-21 on WazirX has surged nearly 2,600% to $8.4 billion year-on-year. The total user base of the company stands at 2.2 million.
Meanwhile, bitcoin uncharacteristically has been witnessing dull trading over the past one week. The world’s biggest cryptocurrency has traded within a relatively narrow 5.4% range over the last week, between a low of $57,168 and a high of $60,265.
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