Unocoin Detects Ethereum Transfers From BitGo Wallet on November 12
Key Facts
India's Unocoin said it detected transfers on November 12, 2026, from an Ethereum address within its BitGo wallet infrastructure, which is used to fund ERC-20 tokens. The company said it immediately escalated the transactions to BitGo, which confirmed the matter was a priority and had begun an investigation. The announcement comes while the platform's services remain suspended, after it said it detected additional unauthorized activity on November 9. Unocoin did not specify the value or number of transfers in its statement. It also said the investigation had not yet determined the incident's root cause or the full sequence of events that led to the breach.
Unocoin said it detected suspicious activity on November 6 and that day requested a freeze on its institutional accounts at Fireblocks and BitGo. It said the freeze request to Fireblocks was sent at 11:24 UTC, while the request to BitGo was sent at 11:29. The wallet providers confirmed that the accounts had been frozen, according to the company. Unocoin said its cryptocurrencies are not held directly on its servers, distinguishing the server infrastructure it has rebuilt from the custody of assets by wallet providers. On November 9, the company detected additional unauthorized activity and decided to suspend all services immediately, saying the move was a precaution to protect customers' assets and data.
The company acknowledged that freezing its BitGo accounts limits its ability to review potential transfers through its wallets. It said BitGo's use of change addresses, combined with its inability to log in to the frozen accounts, means it currently lacks a complete view of all transactions that may have been unintended. The platform therefore did not provide a comprehensive assessment of the transfers or their financial impact in its statement. This limitation matters as the Ethereum transfers it said it detected on November 12 came to light days after the account-freeze request. Detecting outgoing transfers alone does not establish that customer assets were lost, and the platform did not specify the value of affected funds in its update.
In on-chain data reported by The Block, the Onchain Lens account said Arkham showed a balance of $0 across 81,000 addresses it tracks and attributes to Unocoin. But the platform has not confirmed that those addresses were emptied, so the figure is not independent confirmation of customer fund losses. Unocoin said more than 90% of the cryptocurrency held on behalf of customers is in cold storage. The Block quoted the company as saying it had not identified losses of funds, while warning that it lacked full visibility into potential transactions in BitGo wallets. This statement, alongside the restricted account access, remains part of the picture presented by the company, not a final investigation finding.
Unocoin said it is rebuilding its server infrastructure from scratch, estimating that the process will take about 4 to 5 business days. The company described this as an estimate for the rebuilding process and did not announce a specific date for restoring services or account logins. Services remain suspended in its update as customers await the investigation's findings and a review of the transfers. The company also said the cause and full sequence of the incident had not yet been established and that the investigation was ongoing. It said it was awaiting BitGo's findings after the company treated the matter as a priority.
Unocoin dates its beginnings to July 2013, when the company says it started in Tumkur, Karnataka, before moving its operations to Bengaluru. The incident comes amid cases involving other Indian platforms, including CoinDCX's disclosure of a 15.99 million USDT loss in an incident it detected in October 2026. CoinDCX said the loss resulted from the movement of funds through an outdated legacy wallet infrastructure and was borne by the company. It added that trading systems and active wallets were unaffected in that incident. These details differ from the information available on Unocoin, which has not disclosed a confirmed loss amount and said its assessment of potential transfers remains limited.