Tether freezes $4.5 million as Mercado Bitcoin hacker holds $46 million in crypto
Tether froze more than $4.5 million in USDT linked to a security breach at Brazilian exchange Mercado Bitcoin. Security researchers and other issuers reportedly immobilized over $9 million across nine tokens, while Arkham identified about $46 million in assets in wallets attributed to the attacker. Mercado Bitcoin contained the incident, suspended deposits and withdrawals during its investigation, and said customers lost no funds and no personal information was exposed. The exchange has not disclosed the breach’s financial impact or whether corporate reserves were affected. It published suspected destination addresses to aid recovery efforts. The incident adds to a series of attacks on centralized exchanges, though investigators have not linked it to the North Korean groups implicated in earlier major thefts.
