Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin has set November 17 as its target date for reopening Brazilian-real deposits and withdrawals through Pix, giving customers their first specific timetable for moving cash after a November 2 security incident. The company is not reopening cryptocurrency trading or transfers at the same time.
In a November 13 Portuguese-language company update, Mercado Bitcoin also scheduled the return of digital fixed-income investments for November 18 and read-only access to staking and passive-income balances for November 19. The dates are conditional: the exchange warned that they could change depending on approval of app updates by Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
The announcement narrows an earlier commitment to bring Pix back sometime during the following week. It does not establish that customers can already withdraw reais, and it does not provide a restart date for buying, selling, depositing or withdrawing cryptoassets. Those distinctions matter after nearly two weeks of restrictions following the attack.
Pix withdrawals require account revalidation from November 17
Mercado Bitcoin said the second phase of its platform recovery would begin Tuesday, November 17, when the mobile app is scheduled to restore Pix transfers in reais. Users will first need to complete a mandatory revalidation of their account details on their initial return to the app.
The rules will not be symmetric for incoming and outgoing payments. Customers may deposit reais from any bank account, the company said, but cash withdrawals will be limited to bank accounts registered under the same person’s name and Brazilian tax identification number, or CPF. Mercado Bitcoin describes the matching requirement as a temporary security control over the destination of funds.
For customers with reais already on the platform, the change would restore an important means of accessing cash without waiting for the exchange’s cryptocurrency withdrawal systems to reopen. It would not permit someone to sell an existing Bitcoin balance into reais first: the exchange says cryptocurrency trading will remain suspended.
The original November 2 interruption followed suspicious movements from wallets associated with the exchange. DaveFinances’ initial investigation of the Mercado Bitcoin shutdown described blockchain researchers’ estimates of more than $40 million in outflows. The company’s later statements promised to replenish affected client balances with its own resources, but that pledge and access to funds are separate matters.
Fixed income returns November 18; staking visibility follows
On November 18, Mercado Bitcoin plans to restore its Renda Fixa Digital, or digital fixed-income, investment service, including the ability to buy new eligible products. The company said these investments continued updating according to their contractual rates during the interruption, and issuer payments made while services were paused would be credited to customers’ real-denominated balances.
For Renda Variável Digital, or digital variable-income products, distributions paid since the suspension are also to be credited, but the addition of new offerings is scheduled for later phases. The two product categories have different restart rules; the company did not say that all investment products would resume trading on November 18.
November 19 is principally a visibility milestone for staking and Renda Passiva, the exchange’s passive-income service. Customers are expected to see their balances and accrued yields again, but new allocations and redemptions will remain disabled. Mercado Bitcoin said Ethereum staking is the exception: that product was temporarily discontinued and generated no yield during the shutdown.
CriptoCrédito borrowers will also be able to make repayments on November 19, but only using reais. The exchange reiterated that installments originally due in November have been moved to December 1 with no additional interest or charges. Payments using cryptocurrency, new borrowing and additional crypto collateral will remain unavailable.
Crypto trading and transfers still have no reopening date
The company continues to block purchases, sales, deposits and withdrawals of cryptoassets. Its payment card, new account registrations and certain borrowing and passive-income functions will also remain unavailable after the scheduled cash-service restart. Each module has to pass its own security review before Mercado Bitcoin restores it.
That sequencing is more restrictive than a normal phased service outage. Coincheck’s recent restoration of crypto withdrawals followed a disruption at an external screening service; Mercado Bitcoin is instead rebuilding access after an acknowledged security incident with unauthorized asset movements. The two events have no known technical connection.
In a November 9 update, Mercado Bitcoin said it had blocked more than one-third of diverted assets and that the still-unrecovered portion represented roughly 3% of assets under its custody. Those are company-reported figures from that earlier date, not a new reconciliation released with the November 13 schedule. Earlier blockchain tracing examined additional transfers from deposit addresses and left the ultimate recovery value unresolved.
The company says it is replacing affected assets using its own funds and that clients will not bear the financial loss. It has not published an independently reconciled final recovery total or a firm date for restoring crypto trading. For customers, the immediate practical milestones are Pix cash access on November 17, fixed-income transactions on November 18 and viewing selected investment balances on November 19, all subject to the announced app-approval and security conditions.
Johan Shamshad is Editor-in-Chief at Dave Finances, covering financial markets, digital assets, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, payments and regulation. Since 2023, he has also worked as an editor at Gulf News, the UAE English-language newspaper published by Al Nisr Publishing LLC. His work focuses on market-moving developments, company disclosures, regulatory changes and trading infrastructure, with an emphasis on primary-source verification and practical context for traders and investors.