Summary

  • Brazil’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin said it will absorb customer asset losses despite the large-scale hack.
  • Mercado Bitcoin said it puts the damage at about $38 million and has frozen about $11 million as well as more than $4.5 million in Tether (USDT) in cooperation with Tether, Circle, Paxos, BRL1 and Chainalysis.
  • Both Mercado Bitcoin and Binance said they would not pass losses on to customers, but neither provided detailed financial data on reimbursement plans or a timeline for restoring deposit and withdrawal services.

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Brazil’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Mercado Bitcoin, said it will absorb any customer asset losses after a major hack.

Decrypt reported on November 3 that Mercado Bitcoin detected a security breach on the morning of November 2 and temporarily suspended crypto deposit and withdrawal services. The exchange said it quickly contained the incident and that no customer assets were lost and no personal data was leaked.

Estimates of the damage vary by tracking firm. Hypernative, a blockchain security company, said it detected more than $40 million in suspicious fund movements across at least 10 blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Tron. Arkham, a blockchain analytics firm, estimated losses of at least $46 million, while Chainalysis put the figure at about $49 million.

Mercado Bitcoin said it has identified about $38 million in assets tied to the incident. The company added that it had frozen about $11 million of that amount in coordination with Tether, Circle, Paxos, BRL1 and Chainalysis. Tether also confirmed it had frozen more than $4.5 million of USDT linked to the incident.

Still, freezing assets does not mean they have been recovered. Frozen cryptocurrencies can no longer be moved, but a separate process is required before they can be returned to their owners. The exchange did not provide details on how the hack was carried out or on the prospects for recovering the frozen assets.

The incident came four days after Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a hack worth about $6.3 billion on October 29. The Federal Bureau of Investigation identified North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor as being behind the Binance breach, but no link to the Mercado Bitcoin hack has been confirmed.

Binance has also said it will not pass losses on to customers. Chief Executive Officer Richard Teng said the exchange had recovered about 95% of the stolen assets and that the company would absorb the losses. However, neither exchange has disclosed detailed financial data on how it plans to compensate users.

Mercado Bitcoin’s deposit and withdrawal services remain suspended. The exchange said it would resume services once security has been fully restored, but did not provide a timetable.

Suehyeon Lee