chainalysis.comarticleDisrupting the Mercado Bitcoin Attack: How Chainalysis Led the Freeze of Nearly $10M in Stolen Funds
Chainalysis describes its response to the 2 November 2026 hack of Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil's largest crypto exchange, where an attacker drained about $49 million across 17 blockchains. Investigators traced the funds, contacted law enforcement within 30 minutes and worked with Paxos, Anchorage Digital, Ripple, Circle and Tether. Tether froze over $9 million in USDT, nearly $10 million in all. The post does not explain how the attacker got in.
TL;DR Chainalysis recounts tracing the $49M Mercado Bitcoin theft and coordinating stablecoin issuers to freeze nearly $10M.
Organisations named here
- Ripple
- Anchorage Digital
- Chainalysis
- Circle
- Mercado Bitcoin
- Paxos
Technologies named here
- Bitcoin
- Ethereum
- TRON
- Polygon
- USDT
- Tether
- Base
- Chainalysis products
- Mercado Bitcoin (Brazil's largest crypto exchange)
Techniques named here
- Stablecoin freezing
- Address labeling
- Blockchain tracing
Concepts named here
- Cross-chain fund movement
- Public-private coordination
- Window of opportunity for intervention
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