Mercado Bitcoin Attacker Swaps Tokens for $10.55M in ETH, Arkham Says

The gap between what Arkham traced leaving the wallets and what Mercado Bitcoin says it blocked is the detail that matters: it suggests the exchange's containment effort is running behind the attacker's conversion into ETH, a more liquid and harder-to-freeze asset than the tokens originally taken. The swap also shifts the recovery problem from token issuers, who can sometimes freeze balances, to on-chain flows that depend on exchange cooperation. Whether the blocked total closes in on the traced outflow, and whether the ETH is moved again, is the open question.