Mercado Bitcoin confirms breach, Hypernative flags $40M in flagged transfers
Security & Exploits ·
Brazil's largest crypto exchange halted deposits and withdrawals after disclosing a security incident, while an outside analytics firm pointed to tens of millions in questionable fund movement.
Mercado Bitcoin acknowledged on November 2 that one of its internal systems had been compromised in a cyberattack. The platform stated that the breach was contained quickly, that no customer funds would be affected, and that user data remained intact. As a protective measure, the exchange paused both deposits and withdrawals while it investigates further.
Separately, blockchain security firm Hypernative reported in a preliminary review that it had traced more than $40 million in suspicious transfers tied to the incident, spread across at least 10 different blockchain networks, among them Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Tron, according to wublockchain.xyz.
The scale and method of the alleged intrusion remain unverified by Mercado Bitcoin itself, leaving a gap between the exchange's internal assessment and the external loss figure cited by Hypernative. How the attacker accessed the compromised system, and whether the $40 million estimate will hold up as the investigation proceeds, has not been disclosed.
A separate account of the event similarly notes that deposits and withdrawals were suspended following the confirmed breach, with Hypernative's detection of suspicious outflows across multiple networks matching the figures already reported.
What remains unclear is the precise attack vector, whether any funds beyond the suspicious transfers were affected, and when normal deposit and withdrawal operations might resume. Mercado Bitcoin has not issued a formal reconciliation of the $40 million figure, and no timeline for a full forensic report has been shared.