Mercado Bitcoin has told customers they will not lose funds following a security incident that led the Brazilian exchange to halt deposits and withdrawals. The company said the assets involved were worth about $38 million and that part of the amount has already been blocked.

In its latest update, the exchange said it had frozen $11 million in coordination with Tether, Circle, Paxos, BRL1, and Chainalysis. It also said additional amounts that may be eligible for blocking have been identified, while containment work remains ongoing.

Service suspension followed early Monday detection

According to Mercado Bitcoin, the issue was detected in one of its systems during the early hours of Monday. The company said it temporarily suspended access to services as a precaution aimed at protecting customer assets.

Deposits and withdrawals remain paused while the exchange continues its response. Mercado Bitcoin said services will be restored once full security conditions are in place.

Exchange says no customer data was leaked

Alongside its assurance that users will be made whole, Mercado Bitcoin has also said that no customer data was exposed in the incident. The company has not indicated a change to that assessment in its subsequent updates.

Its latest statement focused on asset recovery and containment, saying more potentially blockable funds had been identified beyond the $11 million already frozen with outside partners.

Hypernative traced outflows across multiple blockchains

The initial scale of the incident was reported by blockchain security firm Hypernative, which said that more than $40 million moved out of wallets linked to Mercado Bitcoin overnight. Hypernative said the transfers spanned at least 10 blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Tron.

The firm said the first suspicious transfer appeared at 2:15 UTC. The largest movements were recorded between 6:19 UTC and 6:53 UTC, when wallets associated with the exchange sent funds to newly created addresses.

Cause of the unauthorized transfers remains unclear

Hypernative said it was still not clear how the attacker obtained the ability to sign the transactions. Mercado Bitcoin has not publicly detailed the mechanism behind the breach beyond saying it involved one of the company’s systems.

For now, the confirmed next step is continued containment. The exchange says withdrawals and deposits will stay suspended until security conditions are fully re-established, while efforts to block additional funds continue.

Source: cryptopotato.com