Mercado Bitcoin Halts Transactions Amid $40 Million Wallet Outflows

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Brazil’s prominent cryptocurrency platform, Mercado Bitcoin, has announced the containment of a detected issue within one of its systems. In a preventive move, the company has temporarily suspended both deposits and withdrawals. Mercado Bitcoin assured its clients that their assets remain secure and confirmed no data breaches were identified.

Extent of Suspicious Outflows

This incident emerged shortly after the platform surpassed a significant milestone in its local licensing schedule. An independent blockchain security firm, Hypernative, reported over $40 million, approximately 217 million Brazilian reals, in suspicious outflows linked to wallets associated with the exchange. Hypernative is renowned for monitoring abnormal activities across various blockchains.

Mercado Bitcoin stated that the issue within one of their systems has been contained, customer assets remain safe, and no data breaches have occurred.

The scrutiny revealed that asset movements occurred across networks like Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Tron, and Stellar. According to the examination, activities spanned at least 10 blockchains, including Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and BNB Smart Chain. The first suspicious transfers were recorded around 02:15 UTC and involved Bitcoin deposit addresses attributed to the exchange.

Highlighted assets in question include 106 BTC and 2,852 ETH. Analysts concluded that the aggressors directly transferred tokens, indicating that operational reserves rather than segregated client accounts may have been affected.

Stellar Transactions and Monitoring Initiative

Stellar’s network activity notably featured among the withdrawals. Blockchain analysts found that approximately 6.7 million XLM had accumulated in addresses linked to suspicious transactions. Stellar is widely recognized for its cross-border payment functionality.

In response, Mercado Bitcoin published a specific target address on Stellar to enable the community and security firms to monitor asset movements in real-time. This initiative aims to track token flows and complicate their potential laundering through third-party services.

While observing the suspicious flow of assets, the company did not provide a timeline for when deposits and withdrawals would be reinstated.

Investigation Ongoing

Currently, the platform is continuing its internal review, tracking asset origins and movement while committing to provide regular updates. However, Mercado Bitcoin has yet to verify the total amount involved or disclose which system was compromised.

Users have been advised to refrain from initiating new deposits until normal operations resume and infrastructure security is confirmed. A definitive date for the resumption of deposit and withdrawal services has yet to be specified.