Mercado Bitcoin hot wallets drained in a hack worth tens of millions; the exchange is offline and says customers will not lose assets

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Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin says it identified a security incident in the early hours of Nov 2 2026 that hit only its online hot wallets, not its offline cold wallets. It notified the authorities, suspended deposits and withdrawals and then took the platform temporarily offline, and says no customer data leaked and customers will not lose assets. In its Nov 2 evening update it said about US$11M had been blocked with help from Tether, Circle, BRL1, Paxos and Chainalysis, and about US$38M was still not blocked. Chainalysis, which helped trace and freeze funds, estimates about $49M was stolen across 17 blockchains, mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum. Crypto Times reports that Mercado Bitcoin later put the affected assets at about $36.3M with $12.9M blocked, and on Nov 4 Mercado Bitcoin said the platform will start reopening gradually via its website from Nov 9. The exchange has not said how the attacker got in. Bitquery says the same attacker address first drained about $391K, mostly from wallets tied to the BitMart exchange, starting 53 minutes before the Mercado Bitcoin drain, and BitMart's founder confirmed BitMart was also hacked on Nov 2.

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