Two major crypto thefts in 48 hours, and the market barely reacted. My take: neither incident is enough to tank the market; what really needs to change is our own account habits.

Key details: ZachXBT issued a warning on his Telegram channel that multiple exchange accounts belonging to an EU entity may have suffered losses of more than $106 million; Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin was robbed of about $46–49 million. Gate perpetual XMR has only fluctuated between 591 and 615 over the past two days.

First, let’s distinguish between the two: one involved compromised accounts, the other a hacked exchange.

In the first case, neither the victim nor how they were compromised has been made public. The amount comes solely from ZachXBT’s alert; nobody has confirmed it. The funds were first withdrawn as USDC and USDT, quickly converted to ETH through an instant swap service, and then part of them was converted to Monero (XMR).

In the second incident, Mercado Bitcoin confirmed a security incident and suspended deposits and withdrawals. It did not disclose the amount, only saying users suffered no losses. The figures come from third parties: Arkham tracked about $46.5 million in the attacker’s address, while Chainalysis put it at about $49 million across 17 chains. There are also two figures for the freezes: Tether’s Paolo initially said publicly that more than 4.5 million USDT had been frozen; Chainalysis later said it had helped freeze nearly $10 million, including more than $9 million by Tether.

Stablecoin issuers can freeze funds; nobody can freeze ETH or XMR, so the first move was to get rid of the stablecoins. Who took the other side? According to an analysis by on-chain data firm Bitquery, in the first incident, about 4 hours were spent selling roughly $62.98 million in stablecoins through UniswapX in exchange for about 27,553 ETH, at an average price of about $2,286. The market makers who quoted the trades took the other side. They were executed quickly, so there was no major price impact.

Now let’s look at three sets of data on Gate perpetuals.

First, XMR price and trading volume. It’s currently around 606, down about 0.1% over 24 hours, with a range of 597.7 to 615. On the daily chart, trading volume for all of November 2 was about 1.15 million U, less than a third of the roughly 3.97 million U on October 29. Between 3 and 4 a.m. today, about 230,000 U in volume pushed it up to 615, then it fell back to 606.

Second, XMR open interest and long/short positions. Open interest has gone from about 5.87 million contracts at 7 a.m. yesterday to about 5.99 million now, with a notional value of about 36.54 million U—barely changed. The funding rate is 0.01% every 8 hours. The account long/short ratio has fallen from about 1.54 to about 1.27, while the top traders’ position long/short ratio has stayed around 0.99. Nobody is betting this money will push Monero higher.

Third, the BTC backdrop. Bitcoin is around 77,000, down about 1.9% over 24 hours, with a range of 76,500 to 78,500. Open interest’s notional value has risen from about 4.59 billion U to about 4.73 billion U; the account long/short ratio has gone from about 1.72 to about 2.18, while the top traders’ position long/short ratio has fallen from about 0.87 to about 0.67. The broader market’s weakness is due to its own structure and has little to do with the thefts.

My take: The direct impact of these two incidents on the market has already been absorbed. The funds are being slowly laundered on-chain, not dumped in the derivatives market. For an individual account hack, use a withdrawal whitelist and hardware-based 2FA. But Bitquery also found one detail: 8 of the 11 addresses had previously received withdrawals from these exchanges, suggesting they may have belonged to the victims themselves. That means the attackers may have obtained both login credentials and wallet private keys. Keep the private keys for whitelisted addresses stored separately; otherwise, the whitelist is just for show. If an exchange is hacked, there’s nothing you can do personally to prevent it—you can only spread your funds across multiple platforms.

What would invalidate this take: if the ETH held in those tracked addresses is dumped onto the market in a concentrated way, or if XMR breaks above 615 on a surge in volume with a clear rise in open interest, this view is off the table.

Next, watch three signals. First, whether anyone confirms the amount and method of the first incident. Second, when Mercado Bitcoin resumes deposits and withdrawals, and how it discloses the losses. Third, whether XMR open interest can move away from the 6 million-contract area.

Let’s check my call from yesterday. I wrote about LYN at around 0.018: it had spiked overnight, and open interest had fallen back to 3 million contracts, so I said not to chase it. It’s now around 0.0213, up about 11% over 24 hours, having touched a high of 0.0224, and open interest is back to around 4.95 million contracts. I was wrong not to chase it this time. No excuses.

One last question: Have you enabled a withdrawal whitelist? And how do you store the private keys for whitelisted addresses?

For market observation only; this is not financial advice.