Source publication time: Nov. 10, 2026, at 02:25:29 UTC+8. This article covers the recovery status reported at that time.
Mercado Bitcoin began restoring read-only account access in phases on Monday, a week after attackers drained an estimated $49 million from the Brazilian crypto exchange. Customers could view their recorded balances, but the exchange had not provided a date for withdrawals to resume.
That distinction is central to its recovery message: showing customers a record of their holdings is not the same as allowing them to retrieve those assets.
What the reopening allows
A Mercado Bitcoin spokesperson told Cointelegraph that access would begin at 19:00 UTC, with all accounts expected to be viewable by 21:00 UTC. The balances displayed would reflect holdings as of Nov. 2, the day of the hack.
In a video posted to the exchange’s X account, Fabricio Tota, vice president of new business, said the company hoped read-only access would reassure customers that their assets remained recorded on the platform. He described the staged reopening as “a more conservative approach” intended “to ensure our return happens with the utmost security.”
Mercado Bitcoin is one of Brazil’s largest crypto exchanges. In late October, it told Brazilian magazine Veja that it had more than 4.8 million customers and had processed over 215 billion Brazilian reais ($39 billion) in cumulative transactions. Those figures describe its scale, not the completion of its recovery.
The reimbursement pledge and the evidence available
The exchange says it is replacing stolen assets with its own funds and that customers will not bear the losses. It pledged on Nov. 4 to cover all losses with company funds, bolstered by a $20 million investment from Tether in July.
“The vast majority of assets, in fact, nearly all of them, were never even touched by anyone; they were not even involved in the incident,” Tota said. He also said a portion of the stolen funds had been frozen in the hours after the company announced the attack.
Blockchain analysts nevertheless traced some stolen funds to customer deposit addresses. Security analysts raised concerns that the attackers had accessed addresses and drained funds through standard transfers rather than a smart contract exploit. Mercado Bitcoin had not explained how the attackers gained access to its wallets.
Blockchain data company Bitquery found that, as of Nov. 4, wallets it linked to the attacker held most of the stolen funds that had escaped freezes, including 106.07 BTC.
What remained unresolved
The next recovery phase would require users to confirm their registration details before moving funds. Mercado Bitcoin planned to restore withdrawals through Pix, Brazil’s instant payment system, initially restricting transfers to accounts in each customer’s own name.
Tota gave no date for either step. At the reporting cutoff, the exchange’s reimbursement commitment and staged reopening therefore remained distinct from restored access to funds: customers were being shown account records, while withdrawal timing and the cause of the wallet compromise remained unresolved.