Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin Puts Security Incident at $38 Million, Says Clients Won’t Lose Assets

Mercado Bitcoin said about $38 million in assets was involved in the security incident that led the Brazilian exchange to halt deposits and withdrawals on Monday, giving its own figure for the first time.

In a Portuguese-language update posted at 6:17 p.m. ET Monday, the exchange said it had already blocked $11 million working with Tether, Circle, Paxos, BRL1 and Chainalysis. It added that more funds that could be blocked had been identified and that containment was ongoing.

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In the first post of the evening thread, the exchange in Unchained’s translation told clients “you will not suffer any loss of assets” as a result of the incident.

Mercado Bitcoin said it detected the problem on its platform in the early hours of Monday and triggered its security protocols, suspending access to services as a precaution to protect client assets. Services will resume only when security conditions are fully in place, the exchange said, and it will share timing only through its official channels.

The exchange’s $38 million estimate is below the more than $40 million that security firm Hypernative estimated had been drained from wallets it linked to the exchange, as Unchained reported on Monday.

Mercado Bitcoin’s first statement, posted Monday morning, said there had been no losses to clients and no data leak, and gave no dollar figure. A later update listed the destination addresses tied to the movements on EVM chains, Bitcoin, Solana, Stellar and Tron so they could be tracked.

The exchange has not said how the incident happened. It came four days after Binance’s hot wallets were drained on Oct. 29. Opsek founder Pablo Sabbatella, discussing the recent hacks on Unchained on Monday, said “if the industry really doesn’t wake up,” then “things are gonna get far worse.” Sabbatella cited the rapid advancement of AI as a cause for concern.

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