BitMart reports minor hack as wind-down and restructuring drag on

BitMart built its reputation on cheap listings and fast onboarding before a 2021 breach drained tens of millions in assets, an episode that still colors how the exchange is perceived. By 2025 it was mid-restructuring, trying to settle creditor claims from that period, when a second breach hit on November 2 — the same day Brazil's largest exchange, Mercado Bitcoin, lost $48.6 million to an exploit, a coincidence founder Sheldon Xia says is not coincidental.

While restructuring is unresolved, any new loss complicates calculations for who gets repaid first and how much remains to be distributed. Users still waiting on prior claims now face a fresh unknown on the balance sheet, and BitMart's management must explain to creditors whether the roughly $391,000 traced in outflows will be absorbed by the exchange or passed through to affected accounts. Counterparties and partners weighing custody of funds with BitMart gain one more reason for caution.

Tracing about $391,000 in stolen funds to the same address used in the Mercado Bitcoin attack is not proof, but it raises a question worth asking openly: are exchanges under restructuring or wind-down treated as soft targets, with weaker monitoring at the exact moment attackers expect it. If one group can hit two platforms on the same day, it argues for shared threat intelligence among exchanges rather than each firm handling disclosure and defense alone.

BitMart's preliminary investigation, confirmed in its November 3 statement, has not yet named the attackers or quantified total losses beyond the traced $391,000. The next marker to watch is whether that investigation produces a formal on-chain attribution matching the Mercado Bitcoin case, and whether BitMart's restructuring plan is revised to account for the new breach before creditors vote on final repayment terms and timelines.