Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin halts withdrawals after $40 million drained across 10 chains
Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin suspended deposits and withdrawals on Monday after wallets across at least 10 blockchains were drained, with security firms estimating losses exceeding $40 million.
The incident occurred between 06:19 and 06:53 UTC, when wallets on Ethereum, Solana, Tron, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, BSC, Stellar and other chains transferred most of their funds to fresh addresses. The attacker now holds approximately 2,852 ETH, 106 BTC, 10,700 SOL, 6.7 million XLM and 77,000 AVAX, plus more than 200 other tokens.
Security Response
In a statement on X, Mercado Bitcoin confirmed it had "identified and swiftly contained" the security incident. The exchange emphasized that no harm to customers occurred and no data was breached. Deposits and withdrawals remain paused as a precaution while teams investigate the breach.
Asset Recovery
The exchange published destination addresses on EVM chains, Bitcoin, Solana, Stellar and Tron to help track the stolen funds. Tether founder Paolo Ardoino confirmed $4.5 million worth of USDT linked to the hack has been frozen. No attribution has been made, and there is no public evidence linking the incident to the recent Binance hack attributed to North Korea's TraderTraitor group.
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