Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin temporarily took its platform offline and suspended deposits and withdrawals after a security incident on November 2.
The company said it quickly contained the incident and, in a later statement to Folha de S.Paulo, reported blocking about $11 million in crypto assets and estimated that around $38 million was involved. Mercado Bitcoin said it had identified additional assets that could be blocked and that customers would not bear losses. Its initial statement said there was no customer harm or data breach.
The initial response followed a warning from blockchain security firm Hypernative, which flagged more than $40 million in suspicious transfers across at least 10 networks from wallets it attributed to the exchange. That preliminary estimate has not been confirmed by Mercado Bitcoin and differs from the company’s later $38 million figure. The exchange has not identified the affected system or explained how access was obtained. It later published destination addresses across EVM networks, Bitcoin, Solana, Stellar and Tron to support tracking.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the issuer froze more than 4.5 million USDT connected to the incident. Mercado Bitcoin said it notified authorities and would announce a restoration timeline through its official channels. The incident came four days after the separate Binance theft and followed the exchange’s phased withdrawal restart; no evidence has linked the two incidents.
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