Chainalysis Helps Freeze Nearly $10 Million After Mercado Bitcoin Breach

Chainalysis helped freeze nearly $10 million in stolen stablecoins after a Nov. 2 security incident at Mercado Bitcoin involving assets across 17 blockchains.

Mercado Bitcoin alerted the blockchain analytics firm early that morning. An exchange executive reached a local Chainalysis specialist at 2:30 a.m. ET. Chainalysis contacted law enforcement within 30 minutes and began sharing freezable addresses and other intelligence with stablecoin issuers and other partners.

By morning, $4 million in stablecoins had been frozen. Later coordination with law enforcement and firms including Paxos, Anchorage Digital, Ripple, Circle and Tether helped freeze more than $9 million in stolen funds at Tether.

The total represented frozen stablecoins and excluded the Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) taken in the incident. The largest amounts involved BTC and ETH. Mercado Bitcoin is Brazil’s largest crypto exchange. Investigators across three continents traced funds and looked for opportunities to intervene. Chainalysis continued tracing the remaining assets.