Crypto Hacks, Binance Recovery, MEXC Ban & Tokenized Stocks News

This weekly digest covers the past seven days, when a second major exchange was breached, a French bank lost funds through crypto rails, and Binance had to prove its reserves after last week’s record theft. Washington moved to cut a top-twenty venue off the dollar system, and banks started turning stocks and Treasuries into tokens. The reports below pick up those threads.

Mercado Bitcoin Suspends Transfers After Tens of Millions Leave Its Wallets

Brazil’s largest crypto exchange froze deposits and withdrawals on November 2 after attackers drained wallets overnight. Mercado Bitcoin, which serves about 4.5 million users and received a $20 million investment from Tether in July, said no customer lost funds or personal data and that it would cover the losses. It published destination addresses so others could trace the flow and notified Brazilian authorities.

The company later put the assets involved at about $38 million. Hypernative flagged more than $40 million across at least ten chains, and Arkham analyst Emmett Gallic said the figure had climbed above $46 million as old deposit addresses were emptied. Tracked transfers included roughly 106 bitcoin, 2,852 ether, 10,700 SOL and 6.7 million XLM, with the largest burst running about 34 minutes. Tether froze more than 4.5 million USDT, and work with Circle, Paxos, BRL1 and Chainalysis first blocked about $11.2 million.

A later recap of the week’s incidents said the exchange had revised the involved amount to about $36.3 million, raised the blocked total to about $12.9 million, and planned a first reopening on November 9 that would let users check balances only.

Binance Restores More Withdrawals, Widens Reserve Proofs and Describes a Months-Long Intrusion

At 04:00 UTC on November 3, Binance reopened withdrawals for 103 asset-and-network pairs across nine networks, including BNB Smart Chain, Ethereum, Solana, the XRP Ledger, Sui, Arbitrum, Optimism, Tron and Base. Deposits stayed open while checks finished. The day before, it published a Merkle-tree and zk-SNARK proof of its October 31 00:00 UTC reserve snapshot, so holders of bitcoin, ether, USDT, BNB, Solana, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD and Zcash can confirm at least one-to-one backing without revealing individual balances.

Its eighth recovery update, issued on November 5, raised replenishment to about 98 percent of the affected user-asset value, up from about 90 percent on October 31 and 95 percent when withdrawals first resumed on November 1. From 04:00 UTC on November 5 it began restoring another 69 pairs covering 62 tokens on six chains, and zero-knowledge checks expanded from ten tokens to 44. The remaining 2 percent are less liquid tokens being bought in open markets and over-the-counter deals, using company funds, the Secure Asset Fund for Users and the futures insurance fund. After access widened, net inflows flipped to roughly $2.3 billion over 24 hours.

A postmortem published the same week said the October 29 theft ended a campaign that began in June, when a wallet-team engineer downloaded a tampered package while setting up an AI coding tool, and continued in September with a fake recruiting pitch that led another engineer to open a malicious coding assignment. Attackers later reached the internal wallet-signing service. Binance said Ethereum’s EIP-7702 delegation feature helped unauthorized transfers continue after withdrawals were halted. Co-CEO Richard Teng called it “a months-long campaign.” About $2.85 billion had been frozen or intercepted.

FinCEN Orders U.S. Institutions to Stop Moving Funds for MEXC

The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network on November 6 barred covered American financial institutions from processing any transmittal of funds to or from MEXC Global, including convertible virtual currency. The order, issued under section 9714 of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act, finds that the Seychelles-incorporated exchange — among the world’s 20 largest by volume — is of primary money laundering concern in connection with Russian illicit finance.

FinCEN said that between May 2021 and May 2026 the platform facilitated about $16.7 billion tied to illicit activity, including nearly $1.5 billion in Russian sanctions-evasion exposure, about $129 million with OFAC-designated Garantex after that listing, about $1.87 billion in Iran-linked exposure and about $1.99 billion connected to cybercrime. The prohibition binds banks, brokers and money transmitters, not users; it is not an OFAC sanctions listing and does not freeze balances. It takes effect 30 days after Federal Register publication, with no end date. As of the evening of November 6 that publication had not appeared.

Democrats Take the House and the CLARITY Act’s Calendar Shrinks

U.S. midterm projections on November 4 gave Democrats control of the House, with seat estimates from at least 225 to at least 244. Later coverage the same day reported that they had also secured the Senate. The new Congress meets on January 3, 2027, putting Hakeem Jeffries on course for the speakership and Maxine Waters in line to chair House Financial Services. Analyst Jaret Seiberg of TD Cowen expects oversight hearings on crypto businesses tied to President Donald Trump.

The House passed the CLARITY market-structure bill in July 2025 by 294 to 134. The Senate rejected it 49 to 50 on September 15, with every yes vote coming from Republicans. Without Senate action by January 3 the bill expires, and any successor would have to clear a Waters-led committee. Stablecoin rules under the GENIUS Act, and SEC and CFTC rulemaking, continue either way.

French Bank Confirms a Cyberattack as an Investigator Traces More Than $133 Million

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, a cooperative bank with more than 5.8 million members and customers and €211.5 billion in assets, confirmed on November 4 a cyberattack that enabled “fraudulent operations.” It said the incident was closed and under control, that customer assets were not affected, and that some legitimate transfers were delayed.

On-chain investigator ZachXBT traced more than $133 million withdrawn through exchange accounts from November 1, first as about $106 million in USDC and USDT and then another $27 million. He said the attacker swapped stablecoins into ether and converted part of the haul into Monero, and expressed high confidence that North Korea’s Lazarus group was not involved. The bank has not published its own figure; later recaps said it acknowledged the order of magnitude and that attackers entered through an external provider’s platform and drew on a bank-owned account. Arkéa has applied for authorisation under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets rules.

Morgan Stanley Starts Tokenizing Stocks and Treasuries on DTCC Rails

Morgan Stanley said it is among the first banks using DTCC’s Tokenization Service to turn U.S. equities and U.S. Treasuries held at the Depository Trust Company into blockchain tokens. The service went live on October 28 on the Canton Network and Hyperledger Besu. The bank’s November 3 confirmation is the first from a major firm that it is already creating those digital twins, citing liquidity, collateral mobility and around-the-clock settlement.

More than 20 firms, including JPMorgan and Citi, have signed on. The initial universe covers selected Russell 1000 names, major index ETFs and U.S. government securities, under an SEC no-action letter that gives DTC a three-year framework. DTCC has said about $30 trillion of securities may be eligible in that first rollout.

Block Sets Aside Most of a Billion Dollars for a Proposed DOJ AML Deal

Block disclosed a proposed settlement with the U.S. Justice Department in a November 3 securities filing, reflecting an October agreement in principle. The package would defer a criminal charge for three years over an allegedly ineffective Bank Secrecy Act anti-money-laundering program. After credits for earlier regulatory payments, the cash cost is about $764 million, which Block said it has already reserved — more than its third-quarter profit of $566 million.

The investigation began in 2023 after a Hindenburg Research short report on Cash App compliance, which Block disputed. In April 2025 New York’s financial regulator fined the company $40 million after unresolved alerts rose from about 18,000 in 2018 to more than 169,000 by 2020. Bitcoin-ecosystem gross profit halved to $52 million in the third quarter, even as overall gross profit rose 22 percent to $3.24 billion. The SEC closed its parallel inquiry in March 2026 without recommending enforcement.

Hong Kong Turns On Around-the-Clock Tokenized Settlement

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority expanded Project Ensemble on November 2 so participating banks can settle real-value tokenized payments, treasury trades and tokenized investments at any hour using tokenized central bank money. Chief Executive Eddie Yue announced the EnsembleTX upgrade at Hong Kong FinTech Week.

Recognized dealers have already completed secondary-market trial trades in tokenized Exchange Fund Bills, and the next planned step is to bring regulated stablecoins into those trials. Project Ensemble began in March 2024. HSBC said its RedCoin stablecoin, launched on October 23 inside the PayMe app, had reached about 50,000 users in ten days.

Hong Kong Writes OECD Crypto Tax Reporting Into Law

Hong Kong’s Legislative Council on November 4 passed a bill that inserts the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework into the Inland Revenue Ordinance. Crypto-asset service providers with a Hong Kong nexus — including exchanges, brokers, dealers, market makers and crypto ATM operators — must collect customer tax data from 2027. The Inland Revenue Department plans to exchange that information with partner jurisdictions from 2028. The same bill updates the Common Reporting Standard from 2028, with first exchanges under the amended standard from 2029.

Providers must register on a new IRD CARF Portal by 31 January of the year after they first qualify, gather tax-residence self-certifications, file annual returns covering crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto exchanges as well as transfers to external wallets, and keep records for six years. The duties sit beside, not instead of, Securities and Futures Commission licensing for trading platforms.

A Compliance-Vendor Outage Pauses Withdrawals From Tokyo to São Paulo

Eight crypto firms or banks with crypto products reported attacks, leaks or withdrawal pauses in the nine days to November 6, and in half of those cases the trouble arrived through a third party. After an intrusion disclosed on October 30, Chainalysis said on November 4 that password hashes and active session tokens for all of its users had been exposed, and it shut down KYT, its transaction-review tool, for about 45 hours until staged reconnection began on November 6.

Coincheck paused withdrawal requests from 00:04 Japan time on November 5, blaming an unnamed external on-chain analysis service and saying customer assets had not been accessed. On November 6, Nubank suspended crypto deposits and withdrawals in NuCripto while buying and selling continued, citing a fault at an external verification provider. Mercado Pago posted a similar notice in Brazil. Neither firm named the vendor.

Polygon Validators Weigh a Hard Fork to Recover 70.5 Million Stolen POL

A member of the Polygon Labs validator support team has proposed a hard fork of the Polygon proof-of-stake chain to seize about 70.50 million POL, worth roughly $6.5 million, stolen in two incidents on October 29 and 30 and send it to recovery wallets designated by Binance and Polymarket. Validators are already restricting those balances from moving. The proposal was scheduled for a governance call on November 5. If it advances, client work and testnet rehearsals would take about two to three weeks, with no new POL created.

In the Polymarket-related incident, validators blocked four addresses holding about 24 million POL. The attacker later offered validators cash to lift the restrictions. The proposal calls the intervention exceptional and warns against treating transaction reversal as routine.

BitMine Edges Within a Whisper of 5 Percent of All Ether

NYSE-listed BitMine Immersion Technologies bought another 5,000 ETH, worth about $11.22 million, around November 3, according to Lookonchain. That took its stash to roughly 6.065 million ETH, about 4.96 percent of supply and valued near $13.7 billion, leaving the firm about 99 percent of the way to its public 5 percent target.

Ether held on centralized exchanges fell from 3.56 percent of supply on October 28 to 3.20 percent by November 2, Santiment data show. The lasting fact is how large a single public holder of ether has become.

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