In February 2022, attackers pulled roughly $7.5 million (about ₹72 crore at $1 ≈ ₹96.0) out of Bitbns, one of India’s oldest home-grown crypto exchanges. The people who mattered most — the traders whose coins sat on the platform — were told something very different: the service was down for “system maintenance.” They would not learn what actually happened for roughly 13 months, and only then because an independent on-chain investigator pieced the trail together and posted it publicly.
That gap between what happened and what users were told is the sharpest way to understand Bitbns. It is a bootstrapped company that scaled to millions of accounts on almost no outside money, that out-survived a tax regime designed, in effect, to strangle its industry, and that has repeatedly chosen its own read of a situation over the disclosure its customers might have wanted. This is how it was built, how it earns, and where the risks still sit.
Quick facts
| Company | Bitbns (a product brand of Buyhatke Internet Private Limited) |
| Founded | Platform went live 14 December 2017, Bengaluru |
| Founders | Gaurav Dahake (CEO), Prashant Singh (CTO), Srikanth Sethumadhavan (front-end) |
| Businesses | Crypto exchange: spot and futures trading, P2P USDT, Bitdroplet (crypto SIP), Fixed Income Plans, BNS utility token |
| Legal entities | Buyhatke Internet Pvt Ltd (CIN U74900KA2015PTC079542, incorporated 27 March 2015); Bitbns Internet Pvt Ltd (CIN U72900KA2020PTC136592, incorporated 28 July 2020) |
| Latest FY revenue | Buyhatke Internet Pvt Ltd reported under ₹10 crore for FY25 (Tracxn, registrar-based); Bitbns-only audited P&L is not public |
| Funding / valuation | Largely bootstrapped; reported total $490K–$980K (Tracxn / PitchBook); no confirmed unicorn valuation |
| Users (company-stated) | 4 million+ registered accounts |
| Status / CEO | Private; FIU-IND registered; CEO Gaurav Dahake |
What Bitbns does
Bitbns is a Bengaluru-based cryptocurrency exchange aimed at retail Indian investors. It lets users buy, sell, hold and trade digital assets in rupees and in stablecoins, and it wraps that core with a set of savings-style products meant to keep money on the platform. The main things a customer can do:
- Spot trading: buy and sell 400+ crypto assets (company-stated), a range Bitbns has long marketed as among the widest of any Indian exchange.
- Futures: leveraged derivatives on major pairs.
- P2P USDT deposits and withdrawals: peer-to-peer rails, advertised at zero fee, with a minimum around 15 USDT (Bitbns support docs).
- Bitdroplet: a systematic investment plan (SIP) for crypto — recurring buys of BTC, ETH and similar at a 0.25% trade fee, sold as rupee-cost averaging (Bitdroplet).
- Fixed Income Plans (FIP): lock-in plans that pay a stated yield — advertised up to about 13% on certain BTC/USDT plans (Bitbns).
- BNS token: the exchange’s own utility token, used for fee discounts.
The origin
Bitbns did not start as a first idea. Its founders, Gaurav Dahake and Prashant Singh, are IIT Kharagpur graduates who had already built BuyHatke, a price-comparison service run under Buyhatke Internet Private Limited, incorporated on 27 March 2015. Dahake’s earlier ventures included a clean-energy attempt and a push-notifications tool. In other words, the crypto exchange was a pivot inside an existing internet company, not a clean-sheet startup.
The insight was timing plus a gap. Through 2017, as the first big retail crypto cycle drew Indians in, Dahake noticed the same thing many founders did: demand was climbing, but the number of usable, India-facing exchanges was small. Bitbns went live on 14 December 2017, near the top of that cycle, with a third co-founder, Srikanth Sethumadhavan, on the front end. The name is a compression of “Bit Buy and Sell.” The wager was simple — Indians would trade crypto if someone gave them a rupee on-ramp and enough coins to choose from — and Bitbns leaned into breadth of listings as its wedge from the start.
The struggle years
Almost nothing about Bitbns’s timeline was smooth. It launched weeks before the market turned, then spent years absorbing shocks that came from regulators, from the market, and from its own security. The hardest stretches, in order:
First, the crash. Bitbns opened in December 2017; within months the 2018 bear market had gutted volumes across every Indian exchange. Then came the regulatory freeze. In April 2018 the Reserve Bank of India barred banks from serving crypto businesses, cutting the entire sector off from the banking system. Indian exchanges spent roughly two years operating under that shadow — routing around it with peer-to-peer rails — until the Supreme Court struck the RBI circular down in March 2020. Bitbns survived the banking ban the way it survived most things: by staying small, cheap to run, and not dependent on a war chest it did not have.
Then came the security failure that still defines the company’s reputation. In February 2022 the platform went dark, described publicly as “system maintenance.” In reality, per later reporting, attackers had drained about $7.5 million, moving funds through Ethereum addresses after price and withdrawal anomalies appeared on tokens including Polygon, BNB and Aave. Users were not told. The breach only surfaced around March 2023, when on-chain investigator ZachXBT alleged the exchange had covered up a hack “under the guise of a system maintenance.” Co-founder Dahake went on YouTube to respond, calling it a “small incident” and saying most big exchanges had seen similar events — a framing that did little to settle the core complaint: customers had been kept in the dark for roughly 13 months.
The turning point
The single event that reshaped Bitbns’s economics was not a funding round or a product — it was a tax. On 1 July 2022 India’s 1% tax deducted at source (TDS) on crypto transfers took effect, on top of a flat 30% tax on gains introduced that April. For an industry built on frequent trading, a 1% cut on every transaction was close to a kill switch for the high-frequency and market-making activity that generated most volume.
The numbers on each side of that date are stark. In the days after the TDS began, reported trade-volume declines were severe across the sector — roughly 60% to 90% at peers such as WazirX, ZebPay and CoinDCX. Bitbns fared comparatively better in the immediate aftermath, with reported drops in the ~34% to 37% range in early July 2022. But the longer arc was brutal for everyone: industry volumes are estimated to have fallen about 90% over time, and by 2025 an estimated 72.7% of Indian crypto trading had migrated offshore to platforms outside India’s tax reach (KoinX estimate). The turning point, in short, made Bitbns’s core trading business structurally smaller — and pushed the company harder toward its stickier savings-style products.
The money behind it
Bitbns is unusual among India’s better-known crypto names for how little outside capital it took. It has consistently been described as bootstrapped, and the public funding record is thin and slightly contradictory across databases:
- Reported total funding: figures conflict — Tracxn lists about $490K from a single round dated 30 July 2020; PitchBook lists about $980K total. Both are small by exchange standards; treat either as “reported,” not audited.
- The July 2020 event coincides with the incorporation of a second entity, Bitbns Internet Private Limited (28 July 2020), and with the launch of the BNS utility token — so at least part of the “raise” reflects a token distribution rather than conventional equity.
- No confirmed venture mega-round or unicorn valuation: unlike CoinDCX or the WazirX era, Bitbns has no publicly documented large VC round or nine-figure valuation. Any “valuation” claim should be treated as unconfirmed.
- Ownership: the operating entity, Buyhatke Internet Private Limited, remains controlled by directors Gaurav Dahake and Prashant Singh (registrar records), with paid-up capital reported at just ₹1.2 lakh — consistent with a founder-held, lightly capitalised structure.
The honest read: Bitbns is a founder-owned business that grew on cash flow and a very light balance sheet, not on investor fuel. That is its defining financial trait — and, as the risks section notes, a double-edged one.
How it makes money
Like most exchanges, Bitbns earns primarily from the spread between what traders pay to transact and what it costs to run the venue. The published mechanics:
- Trading fees: a standard 0.25% trade fee applies to users who do not hold or pay with BNS tokens (Bitbns fee schedule). Fee discounts are the main reason to hold BNS.
- Product fees: Bitdroplet SIP purchases carry a 0.25% trade fee; futures and other products add their own charges.
- The spread on yield products: Fixed Income Plans pay users a stated yield (advertised up to ~13%); Bitbns must deploy that capital at a higher return than it pays out for the product to be profitable — the margin sits in that gap.
- P2P rails: marketed at zero fee, these are less a profit centre than a way to keep deposits and withdrawals flowing when banking access is uncertain.
- Costs out: the heavy line items are security and custody, compliance and KYC (now mandatory under FIU-IND rules), payment/banking integrations, and the 1% TDS friction that suppresses the very trading the fee model depends on.
The part people get wrong: after July 2022, a 0.25% trading fee competes directly with a 1% government levy on the same transaction. The tax is four times the fee. That is why yield and SIP products — where money stays parked rather than churning — matter disproportionately to Bitbns’s post-2022 economics.
The numbers
This is where Bitbns is genuinely opaque, and it is worth being blunt about it: the company does not publish audited, Bitbns-only revenue and profit. The operating entity, Buyhatke Internet Private Limited, blends the exchange with the older BuyHatke price-comparison business, and registrar filings behind aggregator paywalls disclose only broad revenue bands. What can be stated with a source, unit in ₹ crore:
| Financial year (Buyhatke Internet Pvt Ltd) | Reported revenue band (₹ crore) | Profit / loss |
| FY24 (ended 31 Mar 2024) | Band ₹1–100 crore (Tracxn / Tofler) | Not separately disclosed |
| FY25 (ended 31 Mar 2025) | Under ₹10 crore (Tracxn); reported ~11.8% revenue growth YoY, profit down ~0.6% (registrar-based) | Not separately disclosed |
A few operating datapoints are firmer than the financials:
- Headcount: about 33 employees as of January 2025 (Tracxn), up ~50% year on year — a deliberately lean team for the scale claimed.
- Users: company-stated 4 million+ registered accounts; an earlier YourStory profile cited 3.2 million users, ~$2 billion in monthly trading volume and 300+ listed tokens — all company-stated and pre-dating the TDS-era volume collapse.
- Listings: 400+ assets (company-stated), historically Bitbns’s headline differentiator.
Everything precise beyond these bands is not reliably public, so it is left out rather than estimated.
Where the money comes from
Bitbns does not publish a segment or geography breakdown, so any split is directional rather than audited. What the structure of the business tells you:
- Almost entirely India-facing retail: Bitbns is built around Indian retail investors trading in rupees and USDT; it is not a global institutional venue.
- Trading fees are the historic core, but that base shrank structurally after the 1% TDS took effect on 1 July 2022 and roughly 72.7% of Indian volume moved offshore by 2025 (KoinX estimate).
- Yield and SIP products (FIP, Bitdroplet) are the strategic tilt: they keep balances on-platform and earn on the spread, which matters more as pure trading churn falls.
- The surprise: Bitbns’s biggest competitive threat is not another Indian exchange — it is offshore platforms and the tax gap that drives Indian traders to them. Its own government’s policy, not a rival’s product, is the dominant force on where its revenue comes from.
The risks
Three risks stand out, each with a concrete mechanism rather than vague “market volatility”:
- Trust and disclosure risk (demonstrated, not hypothetical). The 2022 hack was concealed as “system maintenance” for about 13 months and surfaced by an outside investigator, not by Bitbns. For an exchange, custody trust is the product; a documented cover-up is a lasting liability the moment users compare venues.
- Policy and tax risk. India taxes crypto gains at a flat 30% and levies 1% TDS on transfers, with no offset for losses. That regime has already pushed most volume offshore. Any tightening — or a formal ban debate resurfacing — hits Bitbns’s core directly, and it has no large capital buffer to absorb a prolonged drought.
- Thin-balance-sheet and yield risk. Being bootstrapped with paid-up capital around ₹1.2 lakh is a strength in good times and a fragility in bad ones: there is little cushion for a shock. Layer on Fixed Income Plans advertising yields up to ~13% — to fund those, deposited assets must be deployed at higher returns, which introduces counterparty and deployment risk that customers rarely see. High crypto yields have historically been where hidden risk accumulates.
The takeaway
Bitbns is a case study in how far frugality and survival can carry a company — and where they stop being enough. Bootstrapping let it outlast a banking ban, a bear market and a punitive tax that flattened better-funded rivals, because it never needed the volumes its investors would have demanded. But the same instinct that made it lean — control the narrative, keep costs down, decide internally what customers need to know — is exactly what produced a 13-month silence over a $7.5 million hack. The transferable lesson is uncomfortable: in a trust business, the discipline that keeps you alive operationally can quietly destroy the one asset you actually sell. Efficiency compounds; so does a broken promise.
Frequently asked questions
Who founded Bitbns and when?
Bitbns was founded by Gaurav Dahake, Prashant Singh and Srikanth Sethumadhavan, and the platform went live on 14 December 2017 in Bengaluru. Dahake and Singh, both IIT Kharagpur graduates, had earlier built the price-comparison service BuyHatke.
Is Bitbns safe after the 2022 hack?
Bitbns suffered a roughly $7.5 million breach in February 2022 that it disclosed as “system maintenance” and did not confirm publicly until around March 2023, after on-chain investigator ZachXBT flagged it. The company says it has operated normally since. As with any exchange, that history is a reason to assess custody and disclosure practices carefully.
How much funding has Bitbns raised?
Very little by exchange standards. It is widely described as bootstrapped, with reported total funding of roughly $490K (Tracxn) to $980K (PitchBook) and no confirmed large venture round or unicorn valuation. Treat these figures as reported, not audited.
How does Bitbns make money?
Mainly from a 0.25% trading fee (reduced for users holding or paying with its BNS token), plus fees on products such as the Bitdroplet SIP and the spread earned on its Fixed Income Plans, which advertise yields up to about 13%.
How did India’s crypto tax affect Bitbns?
The 1% TDS from 1 July 2022, on top of a 30% tax on gains, sharply cut trading volumes. Bitbns’s immediate drop (~34–37%) was smaller than peers’ (~60–90%), but sector volumes are estimated to have fallen about 90% over time, with roughly 72.7% of Indian volume moving offshore by 2025.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- YourStory — Bitbns company/decrypting-story profile (users, volume, tokens, founders), 2022–2024
- Inc42 — “Bitbns Admits To $7.5 Mn Hack In 2022,” March 2023
- Yahoo Finance / Bitcoinist — Bitbns hack disclosure and law-enforcement claims, March 2023
- Tracxn — BNS (Bitbns) company profile, funding and legal-entity pages, 2025–2026
- PitchBook — Bitbns company profile (funding), 2026
- Tofler / ZaubaCorp — Buyhatke Internet Private Limited (CIN U74900KA2015PTC079542) filings and revenue band, FY24–FY25
- IndiaFilings — Bitbns Internet Private Limited (CIN U72900KA2020PTC136592), incorporated July 2020
- Cointelegraph / Bitcoinist / Benzinga — Indian exchange volume declines after 30% tax and 1% TDS, 2022
- KoinX — India 1% TDS on crypto statistics (offshore migration estimate), 2026
- Business Standard / Devdiscourse — Binocs becomes tax partner to Bitbns, July 2022
- CryptoWire / CoinGabbar / Yahoo Finance — FIU-IND registration of Indian exchanges, FY25
- Bitbns and Bitdroplet product/fee pages and support docs — trading fee, FIP, Bitdroplet, P2P USDT
- Trading Economics — USD/INR reference rate, 18 September 2026
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