India's Unocoin, a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2013, confirmed a security breach on November 12 after detecting unauthorized server access. The incidents prompted the platform to suspend customer logins and disable trading and withdrawal services while it investigates the breach.
Unocoin first detected suspicious activity on November 6 and immediately requested freezes on its Fireblocks and Bitgo enterprise custody accounts at 11:24 UTC and 11:29 UTC, respectively. Both custody providers confirmed the restrictions, with no losses reported at that stage. On November 9, additional unauthorized activity prompted the exchange to publish an update and suspend services.
Blockchain monitoring platform Arkham Intelligence's dashboard displays approximately 80,986 addresses attributed to Unocoin with a combined portfolio value of $0. However, the empty balances do not necessarily confirm that customer funds were stolen. The addresses may represent only a portion of Unocoin's custody arrangements, with assets potentially relocated to other wallets not yet identified by Arkham's tracking system.
Historical data on the monitored addresses shows they held only hundreds of dollars' worth of cryptocurrency at most over the past month, with a three-month peak of just above $250,000. This suggests the empty wallets may not represent the entirety of Unocoin's customer holdings.
Unocoin's November 12 security update identified outgoing transactions from an Ethereum address associated with its Bitgo wallet infrastructure, previously used for ERC-20 token activity. The company has escalated these transactions to Bitgo for investigation, though frozen enterprise accounts have complicated efforts to reconstruct complete asset movements.
The exchange stated that more than 90% of customer cryptocurrency funds reside in cold storage. Unocoin is rebuilding its server infrastructure, a process expected to require four to five working days. Website visitors have also reported Cloudflare 504 Gateway Timeout errors.
The security incident remains unresolved pending reconciliation of Unocoin's confirmed custody balances with onchain evidence. Key outstanding questions include transaction authorization, possible data exposure, and the complete scope of the breach.
