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Mercado Bitcoin Halts Withdrawals Over Security Incident as Hypernative Flags $40 Million Drain
The Brazilian exchange says no clients lost money, while monitoring firm Hypernative puts the outflows from wallets it attributes to Mercado Bitcoin at more than $40 million.
Dextape brief
Mercado Bitcoin, a Brazilian crypto exchange, has halted deposits and withdrawals after a security incident it said it contained overnight. A security firm, Hypernative, put the sum at over $40 million pulled from linked wallets. The exchange said clients lost nothing and no data escaped, but has not released a loss figure or said whose funds moved. About ninety minutes later it published destination addresses so the assets could be traced. Hypernative called the transfers ordinary sends rather than a smart contract exploit and said the attacker's signing access remains unexplained. Its count, not yet confirmed by the exchange, shows the attacker holds about 2,852 ETH and 106 BTC across at least ten chains. The exchange says it is working to restore operations safely.
Why it matters: It shows how a security incident at an exchange can lead to outflows across many blockchains before the operator confirms the scale.
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