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On Monday, Brazil’s leading cryptocurrency exchange suspended deposits and withdrawals following a security breach within one of its systems. This suspension prevented customers from moving funds in or out of the platform while the company worked to restore normal operations.
In a statement posted to X, Mercado Bitcoin announced that it had identified and contained the incident. The company stated that customers incurred no losses and that no data had been leaked, describing the suspension as a precautionary measure. Teams are currently investigating, tracing assets, and coordinating with authorities. According to Bloomberg, the company indicated it would absorb all losses.
The company has not disclosed which specific system was breached, the total amount taken, or when services will resume. Its current statements provide no total loss figure and no timetable for reopening.
Mercado Bitcoin has since published destination addresses associated with transactions from the incident, covering Bitcoin, Ethereum-compatible networks, Solana, Stellar, and Tron. The exchange stated it shared these addresses for identification and tracking purposes. Blockchain security firm Hypernative has provided preliminary estimates placing suspicious transfers above $40 million across several blockchains. The exchange has not confirmed this figure.
Other analysts are citing higher figures, noting that the sweeping process is ongoing.
Stablecoin issuer Tether has joined the response efforts. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino announced on X at 10:06 a.m. ET that the company had frozen more than 4.5 million USDT linked to the incident. Tether invested $20 million in Mercado Bitcoin back in July, at which time the exchange reported serving 4.5 million users.
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A rough week for Mercado and other exchanges
The incident occurs just days after one of the largest crypto thefts in recent memory. On Oct. 29, attackers accessed $6.3 billion in assets at Binance by compromising an engineer’s laptop and gaining entry to internal systems used to process withdrawals.
Binance stated it found no evidence that private keys were exposed. By Nov. 1, it had replaced 95 percent of the stolen assets and begun restoring withdrawals in phases.
Regarding law enforcement, the FBI has attributed the attack to North Korea, and the U.S. Secret Service is working with Circle to trace and freeze funds. Tether reported approximately $1.57 billion in USDT frozen, while Circle stated it had frozen more than $800 million in USDC in coordination with authorities.
Binance has indicated that additional points of breach were found beyond the initial compromise, which was originally attributed to a single engineer’s laptop. The exchange has not yet published a full post-mortem explaining how the attackers prepared and executed the operation, which some estimates suggest required at least 36 hours of groundwork.
The destination of roughly $3.3 billion in stolen funds that were not frozen has also not been fully explained, and the exchange has not detailed what it expects to recover from that pool. Investigators continue to track wallet activity across ten blockchains.
