Bitcoin (BTC) Exchange BitMart Hacked for $391,000, Founder Sheldon Xia Confirms

BitMart Hit 53 Minutes Before Mercado Bitcoin

BitMart founder Sheldon Xia confirmed in a post on X that the exchange was hacked on November 2, with an estimated $391,000 drained from BitMart-linked wallets on Base, Arbitrum and Optimism. Those are Ethereum layer-2 networks, where bridged assets such as Wrapped Bitcoin sit alongside native tokens, so the stolen funds moved across multiple chains rather than a single vault, and assets on these networks can shift quickly through bridges, which complicates recovery. On-chain data shows the outflows began 53 minutes before the attacker turned to Mercado Bitcoin (BTC), Brazil's largest crypto exchange, which reported a $48.6 million exploit the same day. In the same reply, Xia said preliminary investigations point to the group behind the Mercado Bitcoin breach, which would make BitMart the first stop in a same-day, two-continent attack sequence. The 53-minute gap suggests one operator ran both breaches back to back, testing the smaller venue before the larger one. The breach lands while the Bitcoin (BTC) price holds near $78,000 after a volatile stretch around the US midterm counts, as our report on holding near $78,000 described, so the market has so far absorbed this year's drip of security failures. Security, not price action, has dominated Bitcoin coverage this week, and BitMart's confirmation adds a new name to the breach list. Xia's post did not say whether user balances were affected or whether BitMart plans to cover the losses, and neither point has been disclosed. The $391,000 figure is small next to this year's largest incidents, but the possible link to a single attacker group gives the episode weight beyond its size.

Wind-Down Left a Severely Understaffed Security Team

BitMart said in July that it would close after nine years in the industry, with full shutdown of operations set for January 31, 2027, and it has kept only a core team since that announcement. Xia described the reduced group as under serious pressure, listing doxxing and threats from users alongside retaliation by some former employees, and naming the exchange's former head of marketing among those responsible. The personal attacks, he wrote, have made it difficult for some technical staff to stay, and the security team is “severely understaffed” while attacks keep coming. That combination explains why a platform in retreat still drew an attack: it holds user data and funds throughout the wind-down, which keeps it a standing target for anyone probing for security gaps. A smaller engineering team also means less oversight of hot wallets and slower responses once an incident starts, both of which matter in the opening minutes of a breach. The industry backdrop sharpens the picture. Tracking of exploits puts the running 2026 theft total at an estimated $8.776 billion, more than three times the $2.715 billion recorded in 2025 and the worst year on record by a wide margin. Most of that figure traces to the $6.3 billion Binance hack from last week, the largest single exploit the industry has seen, and BitMart now sits on a 2026 breach list that also includes Bitget, Binance and Mercado Bitcoin (BTC). If Xia's attribution holds, one group hit two exchanges on two different continents within roughly an hour, starting with the one that had the fewest people left to defend it. Xia said the remaining staff are doing everything they can to safeguard data and assets, though he has not said how long core systems will stay running as the closure date approaches.

A Target-Selection Problem for 2026

The on-chain record and Xia's own account frame this as a target-selection problem, not a one-off: an attacker who starts with the thinnest defense and moves up the size ladder will keep finding candidates as long as wind-downs leave custody systems live. For holders, the episode renews the counterparty question at centralized venues, and the practical answers are familiar: assets in self-custody, or in Bitcoin DeFi positions the user controls, carry no withdrawal-freeze risk, though a decision to HODL off-exchange shifts security onto the individual. Institutions appear to be hedging rather than panicking: BlackRock's IBIT drove a $115.6 million Bitcoin ETF outflow on November 3, and our Bitcoin technical analysis keeps the $76,400 support band in focus. What has not been counted yet is any impact on BitMart user balances; the 2026 theft tally, an estimated $8.776 billion against $2.715 billion last year, now includes the exchange's $391,000 as its latest reading.