MERCADO BITCOIN’S HACKER HOLDS 106 BITCOIN AND HAS SPENT NONE — ONE WALLET GAVE UP 102 — 54 ADDRESSES SIGNED IN ONE TRANSACTION — TETHER FROZE 4.5 MILLION USDT, NOBODY CAN FREEZE THE BITCOIN

Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest crypto exchange, said in Portuguese at 12:56 UTC on November 2, 2026 that it had found and quickly contained a security incident in one of its systems, that customers took no harm and no data leaked. Deposits and withdrawals are off. About 90 minutes later it posted the address where its bitcoin went: 19qGpsHvzh1t6pVi526XNNkh6hW6prDZp.

I pulled that address. It took seven payments between 05:42 and 06:49 UTC, 106.0678 bitcoin in all. As of block 974,389 it has spent none. Most of it came from one wallet, bc1q6gd5r4rdepytytc065dt8jxmyhfxawuc5nzfa5, which paid out 102 bitcoin at 06:41 UTC and now holds nothing. That address type answers to a single key. Over its life it took in 36,465 bitcoin across 7,594 transactions, and it was still making small payouts on the evening of November 1 UTC.

Mercado Bitcoin hasn’t said whose wallet that is, but the chain points one way. At 06:19 UTC a single transaction spent 86 coins from 54 addresses in three address formats, 1.27 bitcoin in total. You need the keys to all 54 to sign that. Of those 54, 37 had paid into that same wallet earlier, directly or through a holding address. Analyst Emmett Gallic wrote: “Lots of old deposit addresses are being swept by the hacker currently.” How the attacker got the keys isn’t known. The address list is what the exchange chose to share, so the 106 may not be the whole bitcoin figure.

The loss isn’t settled. Hypernative’s early estimate is above $40 million. Gallic had $46 million and growing at 15:59 UTC, three hours after the word contained. The exchange gives no number, and Bitcoin Magazine, citing Bloomberg, says it will absorb the loss. Tether’s Paolo Ardoino wrote that it “froze more than 4.5M USDT” tied to the incident. Nobody froze the 106 bitcoin, because nobody can. Bitcoin obeys whoever holds the key. On an exchange that isn’t you, and on November 2 it was the thief. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $77,507.