Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin Takes Platform Offline After $49 Million Incident

Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest crypto exchange, took its platform offline after identifying a security incident involving about $49 million in crypto assets, the company said. The outage has halted customer access while its teams investigate and work to secure the platform.

The exchange said it initially paused deposits and withdrawals as it investigated the incident. It has blocked $11.2 million in assets with help from industry partners including Tether, Circle, BRL1 and Paxos. Its teams are tracking the assets and coordinating with authorities.

Mercado Bitcoin said no customers lost funds and no data was leaked. The company has not announced a restart time and will keep the platform offline until it can safely resume operations. It plans to share an update through its official channels.

The exchange also published wallet addresses connected to the incident across EVM networks, Bitcoin, Solana, Stellar and Tron to help track the assets. Mercado Bitcoin urged customers to watch for scams, saying it never asks for passwords, verification codes or recovery phrases.