Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest crypto exchange, says its customers will not pay for the hack it suffered on Monday, 2 November.
The exchange said the losses are its own responsibility. It had not set out how or when it will cover them at the time of writing.
How much was taken
In an update on X, Mercado Bitcoin put the value of the assets involved at about $38 million. It did not say whether that figure includes funds that have since been frozen.
Blockchain analysts have given higher estimates:
- Hypernative flagged more than $40 million in suspicious transfers across at least 10 blockchains
- Arkham estimated the loss at a minimum of $46 million
- Chainalysis estimated about $49 million, with nearly $10 million frozen
Funds blocked
Mercado Bitcoin says it has blocked $11 million with help from partners including Tether, Circle, Paxos, BRL1 and Chainalysis. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said separately that Tether froze more than 4.5 million USDT linked to the incident.
A freeze stops stolen tokens from moving, but does not on its own return them to their owner.
Withdrawals still paused
Deposits and withdrawals remain suspended, and the exchange had not given a restart date at the time of writing. It says it will resume services once full security is restored, and will post updates on X.
Mercado Bitcoin says no customer has lost money and no data leaked. It has informed the authorities but has not named them, and has not said how the attackers got in.
The exchange has not linked the incident to last week’s $6.3 billion Binance hack, which the FBI has attributed to North Korea-linked group TraderTraitor.
What happens next
Customers will be watching for a restart date, details of how Mercado Bitcoin will cover the losses, and an explanation of how the breach happened.
