BitMart Founder Confirms $391,000 Hack Amid Restructuring
BitMart founder Sheldon Xia confirmed a $391,000 drain from wallets on Base, Arbitrum and Optimism, hitting mid-restructuring with a $319.5 million shortfall already on the books. On-chain data points to a possible link with the Mercado Bitcoin attack.
Attackers drained $391,000 from BitMart wallets on Base, Arbitrum and Optimism on November 2, and founder Sheldon Xia has confirmed it. The timing is ugly: the Cayman Islands-based exchange is in a court-supervised restructuring and already sits on a projected shortfall in the hundreds of millions.
Xia acknowledged the breach in a post on X the following day. He called it a small-scale incident involving a limited amount of stolen funds and said it triggered an immediate investigation. He also said the security team has been understaffed during the restructuring. All three affected chains are Ethereum layer-2 networks.
Possible link to the Mercado Bitcoin attack
On-chain data ties the BitMart outflows to a bigger incident. Bitquery traced about $391,000 in outflows, mostly from BitMart-linked wallets, to an address used in the Mercado Bitcoin attack. Attackers reportedly hit the BitMart wallets about 53 minutes before they struck Mercado Bitcoin, where total losses came to around $48.6 million.
Treat that as a working theory. The connection rests on on-chain patterns, not formal attribution.
A wind-down already short on funds
BitMart announced its wind-down on July 26 and halted all trading by August 26. The court-supervised restructuring is aimed at a repayment plan, and users have complained about withdrawal problems. We covered the trading halt and closure timeline when it was announced.
The restructuring has been partly blamed on a December 4, 2021 hack of BitMart hot wallets on Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain, with estimated losses of $150 million to $196 million. Restructuring documents note a projected shortfall of $319.5 million based on 2021 pricing, the figure at the center of the repayment plan BitMart is seeking court approval for.
Why a small number still stings
At $391,000, this is a rounding error next to the $319.5 million hole. But creditors are the ones carrying that shortfall, and every dollar that walks out of the wallets mid-restructuring is a dollar not available for repayment.
Xia's admission that security is understaffed is the more telling detail. A platform in wind-down is a soft target, with fewer people watching the keys while users wait on withdrawals.
For anyone still holding balances on BitMart, the read is simple. The exchange trades nothing, users report withdrawal problems, and there is now a fresh incident to investigate with a thin team. Exposure there carries counterparty risk well beyond price.
