Bitcoin Market reports security incident and suspends withdrawals after attack on Binance
Broker says there was no harm to customers or data leaks, while the sector follows the biggest theft ever recorded against Binance.
BY THE X-TRADER NEWS NEWSROOM · REPORTING FROM INFOMONEY · 3 MIN
The cryptocurrency broker Mercado Bitcoin reported, in the early hours of Monday (2), a security incident in one of its systems. The episode occurs just days after Binance suffered what the specialized press describes as the biggest hacker attack in the history of the crypto market.
According to InfoMoney, MB stated in a statement published on X that there was no harm to customers or data leaks. As a preventive measure, the company temporarily suspended withdrawals and deposits, and teams continue to investigate the case. Seu Dinheiro recorded the same blockage and reported that the statement was made on Monday morning.
The official amount of the incident was not disclosed. Unofficial on-chain trackers, cited by Seu Dinheiro, indicate around US$40 million moved from addresses possibly linked to the broker, but the estimate is not official. Also according to InfoMoney, MB shared the destination addresses of movements related to the incident and says it continues working to reestablish operations.
The backdrop is the attack on Binance, described by Seu Dinheiro as the biggest in the history of the sector. InfoMoney talks about more than US$6 billion drained from wallets on at least four blockchains, and Money Times cites US$6.3 billion stolen. Times Brasil, with data from DefiLlama, points to accumulated withdrawals of US$5.165 billion, around R$28 billion. The numbers vary depending on the source. Binance has released withdrawals for five more currencies (US dollar, UAE dirham, Vietnamese dong, Philippine peso and Indonesian rupiah), and Money Times notes that the MB attack occurred just under three days after the Binance attack.
The episode is not isolated. According to InfoMoney, other recent attacks hit Polymarket, Mirae Asset Global Investments and Daishin Securities, both South Korean, and GMO Internet Group, from Japan. Some experts believe that North Korean hackers use artificial intelligence for recognition and social engineering. Money Times reports that analysts attribute the attack on Binance to North Korea.
What is at stake goes beyond an isolated case. Brokers guard their clients' assets, and a failure at a single point can interrupt withdrawals and deposits and shake the confidence of those who left their assets on the platform. For the liberal investor, the lesson is the same as that which applies to the traditional financial system: operational security, transparency and the responsibility of those who keep other people's money are conditions for the market to function.
What changes for the investor
In the short term, the main variable is trust. Sequential episodes tend to increase the perception of custody risk in brokers and may lead some investors to review where they keep their assets, including opting for their own custody portfolios. The temporary suspension of withdrawals, although preventive, shows that the operational risk is concrete and that liquidity depends on the functioning of the platform. The information collected does not allow predicting the effect on the prices of cryptoactives, and this article does not provide a purchase or sale recommendation. Monitoring official communications, the reestablishment of operations and possible tracking of resources is the most concrete thing the investor has to evaluate the case.
Automatically translated from Portuguese.
