About 15.99 million USDT and 5,783.81 TRX left wallets tagged to Indian exchange CoinDCX late on 21 October. Most coverage asks whether this was a second hack. The more useful question for Indian depositors is narrower: why could money still land in, and sit in, an address the exchange says it stopped using in July 2025?
We rebuilt the timeline in Indian time and put the numbers in rupees.
The timeline, in IST
| Time (IST) | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 2025 | The flagged addresses are created | CoinDCX, via BeInCrypto |
| Jul 2025 | CoinDCX loses about $44 million in a hack; it covers the loss from treasury | Cointelegraph |
| Apr–May 2026 | Address TQKJQ still sweeps user deposits to CoinDCX’s current hot wallet and gets fee top-ups, per ZachXBT | BeInCrypto |
| 21 Oct, 9:05 PM | 15,819,002 USDT moves out of TQKJQ in one transfer | CryptoSlate, TokenPost |
| 22 Oct, 1:40 PM | CEO Sumit Gupta: wallets “not breached”, the addresses are old and compromised | CryptoSlate |
| 22 Oct, 2:22 PM | ZachXBT: the address was used for 10 more months, so “$15.8M in user deposits was unaccounted for” | BeInCrypto |
| 22 Oct, 3:29 PM | Gupta: “Yes, aware of that… no user funds will be at loss” | Cointelegraph |
| 22 Oct, 5:17 PM | CoinDCX: its sweep of old addresses had failed for a period; it absorbed “operational losses” and credited users | CryptoSlate |
Times are converted from the BST and UTC times the sources give. The funds were then split and sent on to deposit addresses at Binance, OKX, Gate and others, according to Salus’s Darcy, who raised the alert.
What the explanation actually says
CoinDCX’s final account is that some users kept depositing to retired addresses despite warnings. Its process to sweep those deposits into safe wallets failed for an unspecified period, which it discovered on the morning of 22 October. It says all affected deposits were credited, current wallets were unaffected and customer assets stay in segregated cold wallets.
That reads as two separate problems. First, a deposit address known to be compromised was still reachable by users. Second, deposits that arrived there were not swept in time, so whoever held the compromised keys could take them. As TokenPost notes, the transfers alone do not prove a $15.99 million loss for CoinDCX, and the exchange has not put a number on it.
Our math: the sums in rupees
At ₹94.83 per USDT (CoinGecko, 23 October):
| Item | USD | Rupees (at today’s rate) |
|---|---|---|
| Largest single transfer (15,819,002 USDT) | ~$15.8M | ~₹150 crore |
| Total flagged outflow (15.99M USDT) | ~$16.0M | ~₹152 crore |
| CoinDCX July 2025 hack | ~$44M | ~₹417 crore |
| WazirX July 2024 hack | ~$230M | ~₹2,181 crore |
The rupee figures for the older hacks use today’s rate, not the rate on the day, so treat them as a size comparison only. Even so, the pattern is clear: three large security events at Indian exchanges in a little over two years, which is exactly the point ZachXBT raised.
What it means for Indian investors
- Never reuse an old deposit address. Always copy a fresh one from the app before each deposit. CoinDCX says users who sent coins to retired addresses were the source of this exposure.
- Check your ledger. If you deposited USDT or TRX on TRON to CoinDCX in the past year, confirm each deposit shows as credited.
- Tax doesn’t change. A platform absorbing its own losses has no effect on your liability. Gains stay at 30% plus cess with 1% TDS; our tools page has the net-in-hand and TDS calculators.
- Track the coin itself on our USDT price page.
BtcMedia verdict
The users appear to be covered, which matters most. But “a sweeping process failed” is an operations failure at the exact spot a 2025 hack left open. Until CoinDCX publishes how long the failure lasted and how much it absorbed, the honest summary is: no customer loss reported, but the exchange’s own accounting is still incomplete.
FAQ
Was CoinDCX hacked again? CoinDCX says no. It says the funds came from addresses compromised in July 2025, and that its current wallets were not breached.
Did any CoinDCX user lose money? CoinDCX says all affected deposits were credited to users and that it absorbed the losses. It has not stated the amount.
How do I avoid this on any exchange? Generate a fresh deposit address every time, double-check the network, and move long-term holdings to a wallet you control.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice.