Brazilian exchange Mercado Bitcoin says customers will not lose assets after an attack on its online hot wallets, the wallets used for daily deposits and withdrawals. The exchange discovered the breach on the night of November 2, informed the authorities and took the platform offline as a precaution. Most customer holdings are kept in offline wallets, which the attackers could not reach.
In its latest official update, the exchange reported that about €10 million had been blocked with help from Tether, Circle, Paxos and Chainalysis, while roughly €34 million had not yet been frozen, Crypto Insiders reported, converting the amounts at the ECB reference rate of November 3.
Mercado Bitcoin says it takes financial responsibility, but it has not said which funds will cover the missing assets, and no independent overview of its reserves has been published. There is also no reopening date yet for deposits and withdrawals, and the attack method has not been disclosed.
The exchange warns customers that it never offers compensation through links, WhatsApp messages or phone calls and never asks for passwords, verification codes or recovery phrases, a common follow-up tactic by scammers after a hack. Its next update should say when withdrawals resume and how much of the stolen money has been recovered. The incident adds to a run of exchange security events since Binance’s $6.3 billion breach on October 29, and is a reminder of why exchanges keep most customer funds in cold storage.
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