The attacker who hit Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin kept draining customer deposit addresses for about four hours after the exchange said the breach was contained, according to analysis by blockchain data firm Bitquery reported by CoinDesk. Mercado made that statement at 12:56 UTC on November 2. Bitquery recorded drains from 36,042 Ethereum deposit addresses between 12:27 and 16:56 UTC, addresses that together held about $266,000.
Bitquery traced $48.6 million across 10 blockchains, above the roughly $40 million first reported. The same attacker also took about $391,000, mostly from wallets that Bitquery links to the BitMart exchange. BitMart founder Sheldon Xia said BitMart was hacked on November 2 and that a preliminary investigation points to the same group.
Mercado has pledged to cover all user losses. Tether, Circle and Chainalysis helped freeze more than $15 million. Deposits and withdrawals remain suspended, and the website is due to reopen in view-only mode on November 9, with no date yet for deposits or withdrawals. The cause of the breach is still unknown, and Mercado could not be reached for comment.
The findings matter for how exchanges communicate during incidents. A “contained” announcement made while funds were still leaving shows how hard it is to confirm an attack has stopped. The incident comes days after the much larger Binance breach, keeping exchange security in focus.
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