Mercado Bitcoin suffers suspected $47M multichain theft
Key points
- Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin suffered a suspected theft exceeding $46 million across 17 blockchain networks.
- Attackers drained major hot wallets within 67 minutes before targeting 27,160 customer deposit addresses.
- Tether and Circle froze $8.4 million in stolen stablecoins, while Mercado Bitcoin says customers suffered no losses.
Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin suffered a suspected theft exceeding $46 million across 17 blockchain networks.
The attacker drained approximately $284,000 from seven smaller networks before stealing another $48.9 million across major chains.
Mercado Bitcoin said its customers had not suffered any losses following the suspected security breach.
The main attack extracted approximately $48.9 million within 67 minutes, including 2,852 Ethereum (ETH) and 104.43 Bitcoin (BTC).
Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) froze $8.4 million in suspected stolen assets following the attack.
The attacker subsequently targeted 27,160 customer deposit addresses, extracting small amounts of ETH and additional stablecoins.
Blockchain tracking identified $20.1 million in untouched wallets, while another $22.7 million remained across published attacker addresses.
The incident highlights security risks across centralised exchange infrastructure, customer deposit systems and multichain cryptocurrency operations.
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