Mercado Bitcoin suspends withdrawals after suspected $47M theft
Pontos principais
- Mercado Bitcoin suspended customer deposits and withdrawals on Monday following a suspected multichain security breach.
- The incident involved more than $46 million across 17 blockchain networks, with major hot wallets drained within 67 minutes.
- The exchange says customers suffered no losses, while Tether and Circle froze $8.4 million in suspected stolen assets.
Mercado Bitcoin suspended customer deposits and withdrawals on Monday after a suspected $47 million multichain theft, while assuring customers no funds were lost.
The Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange suffered suspected losses exceeding $46 million across 17 blockchain networks, including major hot-wallet withdrawals.
The main attack extracted approximately $48.9 million within 67 minutes, including 2,852 Ethereum (ETH) and 104.43 Bitcoin (BTC).
The attacker initially drained approximately $284,000 from seven smaller networks before targeting major blockchain networks.
Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) froze approximately $8.4 million in suspected stolen assets following the incident.
The attacker subsequently targeted 27,160 customer deposit addresses, extracting small amounts of Ethereum and additional stablecoins.
Blockchain tracking identified approximately $20.1 million in untouched wallets, while another $22.7 million remained across published attacker addresses.
The incident highlights security risks facing centralised exchanges as they manage hot wallets, customer deposits and multichain operations.
