Mercado Bitcoin Breach Wallet Keeps Moving Funds as Platform Stays Frozen

The wallet Mercado Bitcoin tied to its security breach kept moving coins on Nov. 2, even as the Brazilian exchange locked down its own platform. Blockchain records show 2,800 ETH left the wallet at 7:07 a.m. ET, with another 130 ETH following to the same recipient at 10:39 a.m. ET. Etherscan showed no outgoing transactions from that recipient when checked.

Ether wasn't the only thing on the move. A separate transfer pushed exactly 2,236,100 USDC to a fresh address at 8:12 a.m. ET, and roughly 373 billion PEPE went out at 9:57 a.m. ET. On Tron, the disclosed destination sent 100 TRX at 8:28 a.m. ET and then 1,708,600 TRX two minutes later, per Tronscan.

Not every asset escaped. The Ethereum wallet shipped 299 PAXG to an address that Paxos froze at 9:28 a.m. ET — proof that moving tokens onward doesn't put them beyond issuer reach. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said separately that Tether had frozen more than 4.5 million USDT tied to the incident, and an earlier intraday freeze estimate reported by The Defiant put the total around $6.8 million.

The Bitcoin side tells a different story. The exchange-disclosed Bitcoin destination still held about 106.07 BTC in seven receipts, with no spent outputs — not even a pending one — when checked. Mercado Bitcoin published destination addresses across Ethereum-compatible networks, Bitcoin, Solana, Stellar and Tron.

Mercado Bitcoin said its teams are investigating, tracing assets and coordinating with authorities. The exchange also said customers suffered no losses and no data leaked. But access stayed tight: at 1:57 p.m. ET the platform said all transactions were temporarily suspended, with deposits and withdrawals still frozen.

The dollar figures floating around come with asterisks. Arkham attributed roughly $46 million in crypto to the attacker across a custom tracker of 36 addresses — a portfolio valuation, not an exchange-confirmed loss, and transfers between those addresses shouldn't be stacked on top of it. The freezing of selected tokens also doesn't immobilize a whole wallet, which is exactly what the onward transfers demonstrate.