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In an exclusive chat with 99Bitcoins.com, Manhar Garegrat, Country Head of Liminal Custody, discussed recent hacks in India, including that of WazirX and CoinDCX, and said, “Majority of the recent crypto exchange hacks were caused by an industry-wide issue called ‘blind signing’ – a problem that occurs while carrying out transactions involving smart contract interactions.”
WazirX was hacked in 2024, resulting in a loss of $235 million. Meanwhile, CoinDCX reported a $44 million hit after a cyberattack in July 2025. “In most cases, the attackers have exploited this shortcoming that plagues the larger virtual digital asset ecosystem,” said Garegrat.
“Post the incident, we have significantly doubled down on solving this issue by integrating with real-time monitoring tools that help our users tackle the ‘blind signing’ challenge head-on. As the global virtual digital asset infrastructure moves towards the cryptography principle of WYSIWYS or ‘what you see is what you sign,’ we are accelerating in that direction with additional layers of security, transaction simulations, and real-time on-chain monitoring for malicious transactions.”
What are the non-technical barriers to mass institutional adoption in India? Looking five years ahead, what do you believe will be the single most transformative development for the Indian crypto market?
The only real barriers to the growth of virtual digital assets adoption are regulations.
With the new CARF guidelines, it is now apparent that the global nature of virtual digital assets demands, not just local regulations, but requires well-coordinated global regulations to have a real on-ground impact.
As far as the Indian crypto market goes, we will gradually continue to see virtual digital asset regulations evolve as well, and the single most transformative development will be the launch of structured products like Bitcoin ETFs, which will bring in Institutional participation into VDAs as an asset class. Liminal is working hard to build enterprise-grade solutions preferred by large enterprises, including offline HSMs, cutting-edge MPC solutions, and operational expertise.
One must realise that despite its rapid growth and sheer scale, the VDA industry is still a nascent industry. As the industry matures, we will continue to see massive improvements across liquidity, compliance, security, regulations, and other aspects. At Liminal, we have identified and addressed one of the biggest risks in wallet operations called ‘Blind Signing’ by integrating with some of the best real-time on-chain monitoring tools.
Furthermore, our R&D team has been hard at work for the past year building our own proprietary MPC tech as well as a first-ever, offline signing HSM with MPC-based consensus. Currently, the industry relies on third-party solutions, and as the adoption of VDAs increases, we expect large institutions to invest significantly on security – this allows us to bring more robust protocols to the market.
Talking about institutional adoption- perceived to be the next primary growth driver for crypto – what is the current level of institutional interest in digital assets in India? How does it compare to what you see in other APAC countries?
Institutional interest in India has been surprising.
We have seen India’s first ever publicly listed Bitcoin treasury company announcing their intentions to invest in Bitcoin.
On the back of US regulations around stablecoins and VDAs, we have also seen growing interest in the asset class from HNIs and family offices. Having said that, due to the highly onerous tax regime that does not allow for offset of losses, the interest is relatively muted in India as compared to other countries in APAC.
We are observing tremendous growth across the Middle East, Indonesia, and seeing particularly high interest from banks, which are looking to issue stablecoins in Taiwan.
What does tokenization pilot mean for India? And the infrastructure needed to support them?
So far, GIFT City in India has done some tremendous work on Tokenization. The industry consultation paper they floated was one of the best we’ve seen across regions. They have a very thorough understanding of all aspects of tokenization and understand the opportunities as well as the challenges. However, given our overall position on VDAs, India continues to remain wary of carrying out a large-scale tokenization pilot on public blockchain infrastructure, i.e, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, etc, which are the obvious rails of choice for tokenization projects across the world.
As far as infrastructure goes, we have all the capabilities to build end-to-end marketplaces that can support a variety of tokenization use-cases, including the capabilities that we have built at Liminal. Having said that, given that tokenization enables quick and real-time transfers of ownership and associated rights and liabilities, for it to be successful as a concept, it will require a lot of clarity on the legal aspects. This is an area where we are seeing gradual progress globally.
When it comes to CBDCs, why do you think custody will be central as RBI scales the e-rupee and explores cross-border pilots?
Given that the eRupee is built on blockchain technology, custody of the digital assets will remain central to the technology. At this point it looks like a cluster of banks in India offer the eRupee wallets.
While it is unclear whether RBI will open up access to other fintechs, we will continue to remain keen and hopeful to support the widespread scaling of the eRupee system with our custody expertise.
About Liminal Custody
Founded in 2021, Liminal Custody is a regulated digital asset custody provider offering secure wallet infrastructure for institutions across the digital asset spectrum. Headquartered in Singapore, with offices across India, the UAE, and Taiwan, Liminal serves clients across the APAC and MENA regions, helping them scale digital asset operations securely and in compliance with regulatory standards.
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