Mercado Bitcoin Freezes Deposits and Withdrawals After Wallets on Ten Blockchains Are Emptied

Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin stopped all deposits and withdrawals on Monday after security firms noticed its wallets being cleared on at least 10 blockchains. Early estimates put the loss above $40 million. The incident arrives only days after the FBI blamed North Korea’s TraderTraitor group for the $6.3 billion Binance theft, though nobody has linked the two events and no one has been named as the attacker so far.

How the Funds Left the Exchange

Pablo Sabbatella shared a report saying most of the money moved between 06:19 and 06:53 UTC. Wallets on Ethereum, Solana, Tron, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, BSC and Stellar sent their balances to new addresses. The attacker is said to hold about 2,852 ETH, 106 BTC, 10,700 SOL, 6.7 million XLM, 77,000 AVAX and over 200 other tokens. These were ordinary transfers rather than a smart contract exploit, and how the thief obtained signing access remains unknown.

Exchange Response and Frozen USDT

Mercado Bitcoin said it quickly contained the problem, with no harm to customers and no data breach, and that the pause is a precaution while teams trace the assets and work with authorities.

It later published destination addresses on EVM chains, Bitcoin, Solana, Stellar and Tron so others can follow the money. Tether founder Paolo Ardoino confirmed that $4.5 million in USDT tied to the incident has been frozen.