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Magyar3 Nov 2026
The Mercado Bitcoin hack is bigger than first reported: Chainalysis estimates $49 million was taken across 17 blockchains, while the Brazilian exchange says $38 million was involved and $11 million has been blocked. Deposits and withdrawals remain suspended, and the exchange says customers will not lose funds.
Exchanges TradeReviewed News Desk
The Mercado Bitcoin hack is turning out larger and more spread out than the first headlines suggested. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis now estimates that about $49 million was stolen across 17 chains, with nearly $10 million frozen, The Defiant reported. Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest crypto exchange, gives its own figures: $38 million involved in the incident and $11 million blocked.
Deposits and withdrawals on the platform are still suspended. The exchange has repeated that customers suffered no financial losses and that no personal data was compromised, but it has not given a reopening date.
How the Mercado Bitcoin incident unfolded
Mercado Bitcoin disclosed on Monday, Nov. 2, that it had identified and contained a security incident affecting one of its systems overnight. It paused deposits and withdrawals while it investigated suspicious asset movements. Early reports, including CoinDesk’s, put the drain at around $40 million across at least 10 chains.
The estimates then climbed as tracing firms mapped the attacker’s wallets:
- Arkham Intelligence grouped 36 addresses and said the attacker held roughly $46 million, including about $8.37 million in ETH, $8.24 million in BTC and $1.76 million in PEPE, according to CryptoSlate and The Defiant.
- Chainalysis later put the total at $49 million across 17 chains.
- Mercado Bitcoin published suspicious destination addresses on Bitcoin, EVM networks, Solana, Stellar and Tron to support tracing and recovery.
On-chain records reported by The Defiant also showed the breach wallets moving funds onward on Monday evening, including about 2,800 ETH, 2.24 million USDC and 1.7 million TRX.
Stablecoin issuers moved fast on freezes
The most important part of the response came from stablecoin issuers. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino confirmed that Tether froze more than 4.5 million USDT linked to the incident, and Ethereum and Tron records show blacklist actions against exchange-identified wallets. Tether is not a neutral party here: it announced a $20 million strategic investment in Mercado Bitcoin in July.
Circle froze USDC on Polygon and Paxos froze gold tokens on Ethereum, according to on-chain records cited by The Defiant. On-chain analyst Specter reported that coordinated freezes had covered more than $9 million across nine assets, including USDC, PAXG and RLUSD. That fits with the roughly $10 million Chainalysis counts as frozen and the $11 million Mercado Bitcoin says it has blocked.
The lesson for traders is simple: stolen stablecoins are the easiest assets to stop, while stolen BTC, ETH and memecoins are much harder to claw back once they move through bridges and swaps.
A second exchange breach in under a week
The timing is what makes this story bigger than its dollar size. The breach came less than four days after the record $6.3 billion Binance hack on Oct. 29, which the FBI attributed to North Korean hackers. North Korea has publicly denied that, and investigators have not linked the Mercado Bitcoin incident to the Binance attackers or to North Korea. TradeReviewed has tracked how the Binance funds are being laundered, including THORChain’s swap halt that slowed the Binance hackers.
The pattern also echoes 2025, when Phemex lost about $69 million in a hot-wallet breach in January and Bybit lost roughly $1.5 billion in February. CryptoSlate also notes a $388 million breach at Bitget on Sept. 24, which Bitget covered with its protection fund. Different attack methods, same weak point: how exchanges authorize transfers out of their own wallets.
What it means for traders
- Customer funds: Mercado Bitcoin says clients lose nothing. With a $38 to $49 million hole, that depends on its corporate reserves and backers, and the exchange has not said how the loss will be covered.
- Access risk: Even when balances are safe, a withdrawal freeze can lock you out for days. Keeping a second exchange account and long-term holdings in self-custody limits that risk.
- Market impact: At this size the hack is not a market mover for BTC or ETH. The bigger risk is sentiment, as two exchange breaches in one week put security back at the center of exchange choice.
- Check proof of reserves and insurance funds: After Binance and now Mercado Bitcoin, it is worth checking which platforms publish reserves and how they handled past incidents. Our exchange comparison and how we test exchanges pages explain what we look at, and our BingX review (our #1 pick) and OKX review (#2) cover security and reserves in detail.
Watch for three things next: a reopening date for withdrawals, an official final loss figure from Mercado Bitcoin, and whether any of the 17 chains’ funds get frozen at bridges or centralized off-ramps. This is not financial advice.
Follow TradeReviewed on X and Telegram: you hear crypto and trading news here first.
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Sources
- The Defiant: Chainalysis Puts Mercado Bitcoin Hack at $49 Million Across 17 Chains
- CryptoSlate: Tether freezes $4.5 million as Mercado Bitcoin hacker holds $46 million in crypto
- CoinDesk: Brazil's Mercado Bitcoin halts withdrawals after $40 million drained across 10 chains
- The Defiant: Researcher Puts Mercado Bitcoin Freezes Near $7 Million
- The Defiant: Mercado Bitcoin Breach Wallet Sends 2,800 ETH Onward
- The Block: Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil's largest crypto exchange, hit by $46 million security breach
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