Mercado Bitcoin started bringing customer accounts back online in phases on Monday, one week after attackers stole an estimated $49 million from the Brazilian crypto exchange. For now, the reopening is limited to read-only access, and the company has not provided a timeline for when withdrawals will return.
According to a company spokesperson, account access was set to begin at 19:00 UTC, with all accounts expected to be viewable by 21:00 UTC. Customers are able to see balances as they stood on Nov. 2, the day of the breach.
Exchange opts for a cautious restart
In a video statement, Fabricio Tota, Mercado Bitcoin’s vice president of new business, said the initial read-only phase was meant to reassure users that their assets were still recorded on the platform. The company described the staged reopening as a conservative approach designed to prioritize security during the recovery process.
The exchange has not said how the attackers gained access. It also has not announced when normal account activity, including withdrawals, will be fully restored.
Company says customers will not absorb the losses
Mercado Bitcoin has said it will use its own funds to replace the stolen assets. The exchange has maintained that customers will not bear the losses tied to the incident, even as blockchain analysts traced part of the outflow to customer deposit addresses.
The attack has raised concerns that the stolen funds may have been drained through standard transfers rather than through a smart contract exploit, a scenario that may help explain the company’s slower timetable for reopening core functions.
Scale of the platform and the stolen funds
Mercado Bitcoin is one of Brazil’s largest crypto exchanges. In comments reported by Veja, the company said it has more than 4.8 million customers and has processed over 215 billion Brazilian reais in cumulative transactions.
Blockchain data firm Bitquery said wallets linked to the attacker were still holding most of the stolen funds, including 106.07 BTC. Mercado Bitcoin has not publicly detailed the technical path used in the breach.
What comes next for customers
Before users are allowed to move funds again, Mercado Bitcoin plans to require confirmation of registration details. After that, it intends to restore withdrawals through Pix, Brazil’s instant payment network, with withdrawals initially limited to bank accounts in the customer’s own name.
The exchange did not give dates for either the identity-confirmation step or the return of Pix withdrawals. For now, the only confirmed change is the restoration of account visibility, while the timeline for full access remains unresolved.
Source: cointelegraph.com