Mercado Bitcoin

Mercado Bitcoin dates its beginnings to 2013. It developed as a cryptocurrency exchange before expanding into digital-asset products and infrastructure.⁠[2]

On July 1, 2021, Mercado Bitcoin announced a $200 million investment from the SoftBankSoftBank GroupSoftBank Group (SoftBank Group Corp.) is an investment holding company headquartered in Tokyo, founded by Masayoshi Son in 1981. Starting out as a distributor of personal computer software, it moved into the internet, broadband and mobile communications, and has since become an investment group centered on AI-related assets such as Arm, the SoftBank Vision Funds and OpenAI.Open the full entry Latin America Fund, valuing parent group 2TM at $2.1 billion. Funding was intended for product and infrastructure expansion; the valuation was a financing valuation of 2TM, not a listed exchange market capitalization.⁠[3]

According to 2TM’s corporate timeline, a second Series B closing in November 2021 raised an additional $50.3 million, with participants including 10T Holdings and Tribe Capital.⁠[1]

In January 2022, 2TM announced the acquisition of a controlling stake in Portuguese exchange CriptoLoja to enter Europe. Completion remained subject to Bank of Portugal approval at announcement; the plan was to begin with over-the-counter trading and then expand platform services.⁠[4]

On June 10, 2022, Mercado Bitcoin adopted MB as its brand and reorganized related 2TM businesses. Institutional services, asset management, tokenization and enterprise infrastructure were brought under a common brand to provide access to multiple services.⁠[5]

Brazil’s central bank authorized Mercado Bitcoin Instituição de Pagamento Ltda. to operate as an electronic-money-issuing payment institution on May 31, 2023; publication followed on June 2. The authorized entity’s CNPJ is 11.351.086, distinct from the virtual-asset operating entity.⁠[6]

On May 29, 2024, MastercardMastercardMastercard Incorporated is a technology company in the global payments industry whose principal operating subsidiary was formed in November 1966. It is headquartered in Purchase, New York.Open the full entry announced live Crypto Credential peer-to-peer pilot transfers on platforms including Mercado Bitcoin. Verified aliases and asset-and-network compatibility checks simplify transfers. Initial access was limited to selected users, with wider availability planned.⁠[7]

On October 3, 2024, RippleRippleRipple is an American fintech company, legally named Ripple Labs Inc., that provides banks, payment providers, funds, and businesses with blockchain- and digital asset-based cross-border payments, digital asset custody, a U.S. dollar stablecoin, prime brokerage, and corporate treasury management services. Its business makes extensive use of the public XRP Ledger blockchain and its native token XRP, but neither is the same as the company itself; from 2020 to 2025, the company fought a nearly five-year legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over whether its XRP sales were unregistered securities offerings.Open the full entry named Mercado Bitcoin the first Brazilian customer of its managed payments solution. Initial use involved internal treasury transfers between Brazil and Portugal; services for business and retail customers were a subsequent objective.⁠[8]

In November 2024, cofounder and former CEO Rodrigo Batista disputed the omission of his role from the company’s history. Reinaldo Rabelo emphasized restructuring after taking over in 2018. The company told Startups it was addressing the dispute through appropriate channels; the accounts reflected differing views of its early history.⁠[9]

On July 4, 2025, Ripple and Mercado Bitcoin announced plans to tokenize more than $200 million in regulated financial assets on the XRP Ledger, including fixed-income and equity-income instruments. The announcement described planned issuance, not confirmation that all assets had already been tokenized.⁠[10]

On July 7, 2026, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin announced plans to invest $20 million in a Mercado Bitcoin strategic financing round, supporting payments, tokenized investments, lending and onchain capital-market infrastructure. The announcement reported approximately 4.5 million users and included international expansion among the intended uses.⁠[11]

On November 2, 2026, Mercado Bitcoin confirmed a security incident and suspended deposits and withdrawals. The Block reported the company’s statements that customer funds were unaffected and no data breach had occurred; these were company statements at the time, while early onchain loss estimates continued to develop.⁠[12]

Response provider ChainalysisChainalysisChainalysis provides blockchain data, investigation and compliance tools for government agencies, financial institutions and cryptocurrency businesses.Open the full entry estimated approximately $49 million stolen and said its coordination helped freeze nearly $10 million. Freezing assets did not establish that they had been returned to the exchange or customers.⁠[13]

Alongside cryptocurrency trading, Mercado Bitcoin offers Renda Fixa Digital, Renda Variável Digital and staking products. As of November 2026, its website advertised more than 600 digital-asset options.⁠[2]

MB Pay’s official explanation describes it as a payment institution providing payment accounts and related services. Payment-institution authorization differs from a commercial bank’s scope and does not itself establish a full banking deposit-and-lending license.⁠[14]

The terms provide for asset segregation and online and offline key storage. Virtual assets generally lack FGC or FGCoop coverage.⁠[15]

As of November 2026, the terms stated that virtual-asset authorization remained pending, distinct from the other entity’s payment authorization.⁠[15]

CriptoCrédito lets customers use supported cryptoassets as collateral for loans in Brazilian reais through the app. Its website lists BTCBitcoinBitcoin (common symbol BTC) is an open peer-to-peer electronic cash protocol, network, and native digital asset. Full nodes independently verify transactions and blocks according to the consensus rules; transactions are recorded as UTXOs, and blocks are organized into a public ledger through proof of work. Bitcoin is not issued or managed by any single institution, but using, holding in custody, and trading it still involve key, privacy, market, and legal risks.Open the full entry, ETHEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry, SOL, USDC and USDT among eligible collateral; amounts and conditions depend on the product’s rules.⁠[16]