Mercado Bitcoin reopens for balance checks a week after its hack, but withdrawals remain suspended

Mercado Bitcoin, the Brazilian crypto exchange that halted deposits and withdrawals on November 2 after a security incident, began reopening on Monday, November 9, but only so customers can view their balances, according to the exchange's help center. Trading, deposits, withdrawals, and crypto transfers remain unavailable, and the exchange has not said when they will return.

What customers can and cannot do

In the first stage, customers can log in on the website to see their total balance and holdings, broken down by category and asset, the exchange said in its Portuguese-language FAQ. Access was released gradually, with all customers due to have it by 18:00 Brasília time (21:00 UTC). The app shows only a summary, and access through the application programming interface (API) will come back later.

The balances shown are each account's position on November 2, before the incident, with values in Brazilian reais at prices from that same moment, according to the FAQ. Limit orders that were open when the platform went offline on November 2 were canceled.

Still unavailable in this stage:

• trading, deposits, and withdrawals of reais or crypto assets
• transfers of reais or crypto
• the exchange's card
• Pix, Brazil's instant payment system, and TED bank transfers
• new products and new accounts

The next stage: Pix withdrawals and re-verification

The next stage will bring back Pix, the exchange said. At first, Pix withdrawals will be allowed only to accounts in the customer's own name and taxpayer number (CPF). Payments that issuers made on its Renda Fixa Digital (digital fixed-income) products during the outage will also be credited to customers' balances in reais.

Before they can move money again, all customers will have to confirm their registration details and set new passwords. Trading, crypto transfers, staking, crypto-backed loans (CriptoCrédito), passive-income products, and the card will follow in later stages. The FAQ gives no date for any stage and tells customers to watch the exchange's official channels for announcements.

On November 10, a Mercado Bitcoin representative told Cointelegraph that deposits and withdrawals in reais through Pix would resume the following week, with withdrawals only to accounts in the customer's own name, and that crypto deposits and withdrawals remain suspended with no date set, Cointelegraph reported. The exchange had not published a date in its FAQ when we checked that evening.

Customers with CriptoCrédito loan payments due in November had them moved to December 1, 2026, without extra interest, and there will be no margin calls, which ask borrowers to add collateral, during November, according to the FAQ.

The loss and the exchange's pledge to cover it

Mercado Bitcoin said the attack hit only its hot wallets—online wallets used for day-to-day deposits and withdrawals—and that it is replacing the affected assets with its own funds. It said it had blocked more than 33% of the diverted assets, working with partners including Tether, Circle, and Paxos, and that the part not yet recovered equals about 3% of the assets it holds for customers.

The FAQ gives no dollar figure for the loss and says the numbers may change, partly because crypto prices move. In a November 5 video, Fabrício Tota, a vice president at the exchange, put the amount still held by the attacker at $33 million, Portal Tela reported. The exchange's figures have changed since the attack: in a November 4 post on X, it put the assets affected at $36.3 million, according to Portal Tela.

On-chain analytics firm Bitquery counted $48.6 million taken from the exchange's wallets on 11 blockchains on November 2, valued at the time, more than the roughly $40 million in early estimates. Bitquery said the attacker also emptied 36,042 customer deposit addresses on Ethereum, and kept doing so for about four hours after the exchange said the attack was contained. Stablecoin issuers had frozen $11.8 million, according to Bitquery's figures verified on November 5.

Mercado Bitcoin said it has notified the authorities and declined to comment on whether the incident is linked to the October 29 Binance hack.

What it could mean for traders

For customers, the practical point is that balances can be viewed but not moved. The reais values on the balance page use November 2 prices, so they do not show how crypto prices have moved since then, and crypto held on the exchange cannot be traded until a later stage. The exchange has warned customers that it does not ask for passwords outside its platform or send links to release balances, and that re-verification will start only in its app, at the customer's initiative.

For comparison, Binance resumed withdrawals in phases three days after its own hack. The next markers for Mercado Bitcoin are the date of the Pix stage, the start of re-verification, and a final loss figure from the exchange, whose numbers have changed since November 2.