Mercado Bitcoin says none of its customers will be out of pocket after Monday’s hack. The Brazilian exchange plans to pay for the $40 million loss from its own funds.
The figures have moved around since the attack. Security researchers’ first estimate put the damage above $40 million. The exchange later gave a figure of about $38 million and said Tether, Circle and Chainalysis had helped it freeze $11 million.
Attackers emptied hot wallets on at least 10 chains
The stolen funds came from Mercado Bitcoin’s hot wallets on at least 10 blockchains. An exchange keeps hot wallets online so it can handle withdrawals quickly. Being online is also why attackers go after them.
While it looked into the incident, Mercado Bitcoin temporarily cut off access to its platform as a precaution.
The exchange says customer data is safe
According to Mercado Bitcoin, no customer data was leaked. Its teams are investigating the breach, following the stolen assets and working with authorities.
The $11 million freeze is significant. Tether and Circle are the issuers of the USDT and USDC stablecoins, and they can freeze tokens on their own networks. Chainalysis is a blockchain tracing firm. Mercado Bitcoin didn’t say if it expects to get back any of the rest.
The hack followed the Binance breach by only a few days
Mercado Bitcoin was hit just days after hackers took more than $6 billion from Binance, the biggest security breach crypto has ever seen. The FBI blamed North Korea’s TraderTraitor group for the Binance attack.
Binance turned withdrawals back on Sunday. On Monday, it was Mercado Bitcoin’s turn to shut off access.
For anyone with funds on Mercado Bitcoin, the exchange says it will cover the $40 million loss and you won’t lose anything. Until access is fully back, watch your balance and the exchange’s official updates.
