Mercado Bitcoin Halts Trading After $49.00M Exploit

Mercado Bitcoin Shuts Down After Hack

Mercado Bitcoin suspended platform operations Tuesday morning following a security breach that drained $49.00M in digital assets across multiple blockchain networks. According to official company statements published on X, the exchange identified and contained the intrusion early in the morning before halting all deposit and withdrawal functions. Trading activity remained frozen while internal engineering teams worked alongside external security contractors to trace the destination wallet addresses. The platform confirmed that the offline status will persist until internal audits verify system integrity and establish a safe restart schedule for retail and institutional accounts.

Blockchain intelligence firm Arkham reported that the attacker siphoned approximately $46.30M from exchange wallets, while competitor metrics from Hypernative pegged total initial outflows at $40.00M. Company executives insisted that no customer balances were compromised during the breach and that zero sensitive user data leaked into public domains. Platform representatives published specific destination wallet addresses tied to EVM networks, Bitcoin, Solana, Stellar, and Tron to assist third-party trackers. Exchange security teams advised retail clients to ignore phishing attempts and confirmed that official staff will never request account passwords or recovery phrases.

Issuers Freeze Millions in Stolen Funds

Digital asset issuers and blockchain forensics firms moved quickly to intercept the stolen capital across various protocol layers. According to data released by Mercado Bitcoin, the exchange blocked $11.20M of the diverted funds within hours using direct coordination channels established with Tether, Circle, BRL1, Paxos, and Chainalysis. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino confirmed via social media channels that the stablecoin issuer blacklisted more than 4.50M USDT associated with the breach addresses. Partner networks applied immediate smart contract blocks to prevent the attacker from laundering stablecoins through decentralized liquidity pools or cross-chain bridges.

Law enforcement agencies and blockchain analytics providers are actively monitoring the remaining wallet balances as funds attempt to traverse privacy mixers. Industry compliance officers highlighted the speed of the cross-exchange collaboration as a primary factor in containing total financial exposure for the platform. Trading desks across South America reported heightened volatility in regional order-book depth following the unexpected maintenance shutdown. The exchange promised to release a detailed operational timeline through official communication channels once internal investigative reviews conclude.