Mercado Bitcoin freezes deposits and withdrawals after security incident
- Published
- Updated
Mercado Bitcoin suspended deposits and withdrawals after reporting a security incident on November 2, with multiple trackers later putting the value of the affected assets between about $38 million and $49 million. The exchange, Tether, and blockchain investigators later described freezes, blocked assets, and recovery efforts, while Mercado Bitcoin prepared a limited reopening for November 9.
Key claims & sources
What it means
Mercado Bitcoin is Brazil's largest crypto exchange and a Ripple partner, built on the kind of hot-wallet custody model that has repeatedly proven exploitable across the industry. The breach lands just days after Binance disclosed a record $6 billion incident, underscoring how even top-tier platforms remain exposed to wallet-level compromise. Attackers moved assets across at least ten blockchains using ordinary transactions rather than a smart-contract exploit, and investigators still have not established how they obtained signing access.
Customers have had deposits and withdrawals frozen since November 2, with only a view-only reopening scheduled for November 9 while trading and withdrawals await security clearance. Tether, Circle and Paxos blacklisted wallets tied to the attacker, freezing over 4.5 million USDT and helping block roughly $11 million of the estimated $38 million to $49 million moved. Mercado Bitcoin says it will use company funds to replace affected assets, shifting the cost from users to the exchange's own balance sheet rather than an insurance fund or token holders.
The speed with which Tether, Circle, Paxos and Chainalysis froze tainted funds shows how much of crypto's infrastructure now runs through centralized chokepoints that can reverse or block transfers on request. That capability protects users here, but it sits uneasily against a technology built to move value without permission from any single party. Separate forensic tracing found thousands of customer deposit addresses still being drained for roughly four hours after Mercado Bitcoin publicly claimed the breach was contained, a gap between stated containment and actual exposure that exchanges rarely have to explain in real time.
Market reaction i
Bitcoin fell 1.1% in the 4 hours after the first headline, after a flat 2 hours before.
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Thefts of a similar size
| When | What happened | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| 3 months ago | Nesa · Arithmetic Error incident | $50M |
| 1.7 years ago | Infini · Lack of strict access control incident | $50M |
| 2.1 years ago | Radiant V2 · Blind Signing incident | $50M |
| 1.7 years ago | Infini · Private Key Compromised incident | $49.5M |
| 1.2 years ago | BtcTurk · Hot Wallet Key Compromised incident | $48M |
4285 incidents stored · 130 were as large as this one or larger ($49M)