Brazilian premier cryptocurrency trading platform Mercado Bitcoin acknowledged on Monday that it experienced a security breach resulting in the loss of about $46.3 million in funds, based on Arkham data.
“We detected and rapidly isolated a security breach within one of our infrastructures during the early hours of today,” the platform announced via a statement on X. Mercado Bitcoin halted both deposits and withdrawals temporarily as a safety measure while technical staff examine the event, follow the movement of funds, and work alongside law enforcement.
The trading platform stated that user accounts were untouched and no personal data exposure occurred. Furthermore, the company shared the recipient wallet addresses connected to the transfers to assist blockchain intelligence companies and relevant organizations in observing and tracing the capital.
Tether Chief Executive Officer Paolo Ardoino verified that the stablecoin creator blocked over 4.5 million USDT units tied to the security breach.
Concurrently, Arkham researcher Emmett Gallic noted that the perpetrator was gathering capital from legacy deposit locations and liquidating memecoins alongside alternative digital tokens.
The security event at Mercado Bitcoin arrives amid a wave of digital asset attacks and compromises across the cryptocurrency sector recently, following the massive $6 billion breach of Binance on Thursday. On that same day, Polymarket experienced a $2.65 million attack, noting that an external vendor had been breached.
Late Friday night, blockchain research organization Chainalysis reported that proprietary client records were compromised by an artificial intelligence-driven attacker. Importantly, the organization clarified that the event had no connection to the capital theft at Binance.
Over the weekend, malicious actors compromised twelve decentralized finance portals hosted through Name.com, making off with roughly $138,000. Blockaid reported that the compromised portals contained malicious software designed to deceive users into approving unauthorized transactions.
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/defi/2026-11-02-mercado-bitcoin-hack-46-million-brazil-exchange-432333.
