coindesk.com
Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin suspended deposits and withdrawals on Monday after wallets tied to the platform were drained across at least 10 blockchains. Security firms estimate the loss is more than $40 million.
The incident comes days after North Korea’s TraderTraitor hacking group, per the FBI, stole over $6 billion from Binance, the largest crypto hack on record.
Pablo Sabbatella, founder of crypto security firm Opsek, relayed a report claiming the biggest outflows hit between 06:19 and 06:53 UTC, when wallets on Ethereum, Solana, Tron, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, BSC, Stellar and other chains sent most of their funds to fresh addresses.
The attacker now holds roughly 2,852 ETH, 106 BTC, 10,700 SOL, 6.7 million XLM and 77,000 AVAX, plus more than 200 other tokens, the report claims. The transfers were plain transactions, not a smart contract exploit. How the attacker got signing access is unknown.
In a statement on X, Mercado Bitcoin said it had “identified and swiftly contained” a security incident, with no harm to customers and no data breach. Deposits and withdrawals are paused as a precaution while teams investigate, track the assets and coordinate with authorities.
The exchange later published destination addresses on EVM chains, Bitcoin, Solana, Stellar and Tron to help others track the funds.
No attribution has been made, and there is no public evidence linking the incident to the Binance attack.
Tether founder Paolo Ardoino confirmed $4.5 million worth of USDT linked to the hack has been frozen.
