Digital Asset News covers a crypto exchange hack, Bitcoin lump-sum timing, and AI industry growth
Rob from Digital Asset News discusses the Mercado Bitcoin security incident, makes a case for a lump-sum Bitcoin buy around midterm elections, and reviews Anthropic's explosive revenue growth.
Summary
Mercado Bitcoin — the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Latin America — suspended withdrawals following a security incident, initially claiming no funds were lost, and the episode opens with this breaking development. On-chain data from Arkham later revealed a hacker wallet holding approximately $46 million in crypto, contradicting the exchange's early reassurances. Rob uses this as a springboard to discuss the broader pattern of exchange hacks in 2026, urging viewers to spread funds across multiple custody solutions. He then pivots to a data-driven argument for making a lump-sum Bitcoin purchase around midterm elections, using Ben's Cryptoverse tools to show that a single lump-sum investment historically outperforms both standard and dynamic DCA over the same period. Finally, he covers Anthropic's Q3 revenue surge of 1,127% year-over-year, noting that while demand for AI is clearly real, operating losses and future spending commitments raise questions about which AI companies will ultimately survive — drawing a parallel to the dot-com era. The episode also includes audience Q&A covering topics such as the Binance hack response, exchange history, and AI as a force multiplier for both hackers and developers. Additionally, Rob flags a BTCPay Server warning urging operators to upgrade from version 2.4 or earlier to version 2.4.7 to prevent hot wallet draining attacks.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Mercado Bitcoin Suspends Withdrawals After Security Incident
Rob: It seems like we can't go one day without something happening with exchanges. We're talking about this morning, and this is a strange case, and it always starts like this. It always starts with an exchange revealing that there was some incident that happened. And then it starts with, "But don't worry, all the funds are accounted for, and there's no problems." And then a little bit later, something else will happen. They'll say, "Yeah, well, there was this one issue." And then as time goes on, it's like, "Okay, well, now we did lose some things."
So for today's title, yes, it says hacks, but as it's been reported by Mercado Bitcoin, it's an incident and not a hack whatsoever. We will see.
First of all, who is Mercado Bitcoin? Mercado Bitcoin is not just some low-level exchange out there, because as an American you're like, "I don't know, I don't use that, so why is that important to me?" It's because it's a very large exchange. As a matter of fact, it's the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Latin America. And what they came out with today is something that is very odd and strange.
Mercado Bitcoin has kept withdrawals suspended, and right now customers can't withdraw anything, because there is an incident — but no funds have been lost, and it looks like it was all only things that were deposited, which makes no sense. Anyhow, this is what's going on. The exchange says customers suffered no losses, which is always great to hear. Let's see if that holds up.
Its latest disclosure links the incident to destination wallets receiving Bitcoin, Ether, and other assets. Mercado Bitcoin kept deposits and withdrawals suspended after a security incident on November 2nd, leaving customers unable to move funds into or out of the Brazilian crypto exchange while its team worked to restore operations. Pretty much standard stuff.
In a subsequent update, the exchange identified destination addresses involved in movements related to the incident. The disclosed Bitcoin address received approximately 106 Bitcoin — not a big deal. And an Ethereum transaction sent 2,852 ETH to the disclosed Ethereum-compatible address. In an update, they also said, "Look, all the funds are safe. This isn't a big deal. And no data whatsoever has been leaked." Just interesting how it all kind of comes together, and then later on we'll see what it is.
Mercado Bitcoin said it was sharing the addresses exclusively for identification and tracking purposes. So this is an ongoing story, but again, as time goes on, it's a funny thing how this actually happens.
And of course, someone comes here and says, "This is just FUD. You should not be reporting on this until we know absolutely everything, because if you don't know everything of what's going on right now, then you shouldn't report a thing." Look, here's the thing — how many hacks have we had in the last year? No, let's just say the last month. It's been quite a bit, don't you think?
The Scale of 2026 Crypto Hacks
And these things that are happening are kind of important. It's not me saying that — just take a look at DeFi Llama. We took a look at this yesterday. Here is all the hacks in 2026, and it just keeps going. I don't even know 90% of these protocols. Premia V3 lost half a million dollars — not a big deal. Troves lost another half a million. Polymarket, which is supposed to be one of the safest, lost $2.7 million. Binance, we all know that one. ZK Link — and just watch as I scroll through this. This is all 2026. Some are a lot, some aren't that much.
So why are we talking about this? It's because, honestly, it's a lot. I'm getting tired of these hacks and I'm getting tired of the stories and I'm getting tired of the people who email me saying they lost everything, or they left funds on an exchange, or they did this or that. It's an ongoing thing constantly, and I don't get why this keeps happening — as far as people doing the same things and making the same mistakes, over and over again. I just would like to get in front of things before it gets even worse.
So again, as a public service announcement, I just would like everybody to keep what they earn instead of giving it away to hackers. And the easiest way to do that is don't leave things on exchanges if you absolutely have to.
Custody: Spreading Risk Across Solutions
Personally, I do leave things on exchanges. With Kraken and the ETFs or Bitcoin ETF, I leave it on the exchange. And then people say, "Rob, not your keys, not your crypto." I'm so tired of that comment, actually. How many times do we have issues with cold wallets? Well, it only happened once, but you better roll that dice a lot more times. And then of course there was the third-party authorized reseller for Ledger — everybody lost their money there. And then of course there are wrench attacks and thefts and things like that.
So it's one of these things where I'm just like, can we just spread things around? If you just put your funds around — you can keep it in one cold wallet, I don't really care — but those are the ones I get messages from. ETFs, Tangems, Ledgers, Trezors, iTrustCapital, whatever you want to do. Just be safe out there. And that's pretty much it. I don't want to FUD anybody to death.
BTCPay Server Warning and Infrastructure Cyberattacks
Here's another one. BTCPay Server warns attackers are draining hot wallets on outdated software. I don't know if you guys use BTCPay Server — it seems to be on the Lightning Network and you can set that up with your business. What's great about it is that you can accept Bitcoin for your payments, which is what the white paper was all about — peer-to-peer transactions. This is great. Unfortunately, with the advancements of AI, it looks like there's some wallet draining going on. The attack targets version 2.4 or earlier. Operators are urged to upgrade to version 2.4.7. In August, an attack also stole funds from compromised Lightning credentials, prompting remote access restrictions. So sorry about that one too, and again, we'll just add that to the list of constant hacks moving forward.
And lastly in the bad news department — it'll get better, trust me. This is from Coin Bureau. Apparently, something happened in Arizona at Fort Huachuca, which I actually spent a little bit of time at when I was in the military. Some of their freezers were reversed and instead of being a freezer, it essentially boiled over. And now this just happened in seven other European countries that have reported cyberattacks targeting refrigeration systems.
I guess this is a good test before you go all in and really start to mess up the global economy — just attack the freezers. Netherlands: at least 17 businesses including butcher shops and cold storage facilities. Finland: some K Group stores. Belgium: 40 Delhaize stores — I don't know what those are, maybe someone from Belgium can help me with that. Sweden: a bunch of stores. Luxembourg: 65 stores, several Delhaize stores. Ireland: 13 SuperValu stores. And Estonia: a major supermarket.
Again, I guess this is just the calm before the storm. Maybe it's going to be something, maybe it's going to be Y2K — nothing, nobody knows. But I'm just letting you know this is what is going on.
Anthropic's Revenue Surge and the AI Landscape
I will say on the positive, you can make a lot of money in AI — but the other stuff is going to really hurt you. This was good news. Anthropic, who creates Claude, which I love using — great product. Anthropic's Q3 revenue surges 1,127% year-over-year to nearly $1.7 billion, from $1.4 billion a year earlier.
There's a big thing going around — I don't know if you heard about this — called the AI bubble. With that, people take a look and say, "Look, there's not enough demand," and it looks like there's just overhype of this product. But apparently from Anthropic, that may not be true. Revenues for the first nine months reached $3.3 billion, up from $2.5 billion a year ago, which is about a 13x. So if you're looking at AI going, "Is there demand?" — you better believe it. It's looking pretty good.
However, operating costs are a big thing. $1.75 billion, including almost $1 billion for computing infrastructure. So you've got a net loss of $2.3 billion. And then this is the big one right here — future spending: $895 billion. You have to build the infrastructure, you have to take the energy that's going to be used for that infrastructure, and of course everything that goes along with creating AI — the sites, the data centers, cooling those chips, purchasing those chips, purchasing the infrastructure. It's going to be a lot of money.
But there could be good things out of it. I think personally that we could see a big drop-off in AI just like we saw in the dot-com era, and this could be our Amazon moment for all of us. We knew Amazon was going to be big. We knew some different website companies would be big. We just didn't know which ones, and they collapsed but came back even stronger. The trick is to find the one that is the big winner. Anyway, let me know what you think about that in the comment section.
Midterm Elections and the Case for a Lump-Sum Bitcoin Buy
You're in the right place at the right time. We've got midterms tomorrow — that'll be fun, so everybody can talk about how they knew it the whole time. But I take a look at it like this: this is the greatest time, I think, to do some investments. I still say that if we take a look at midterm elections, usually after the midterms is when things bottom. And Bitcoin is no different — over the last four midterms, we've seen Bitcoin bottom out weeks to months later.
So you can wait for the absolute bottom. I'm just not that good. I can't time bottoms and tops. I'm just not at that genius level, I guess. Some people say they can — I think they're all liars. But what I would say to you, and this is what I'm going to be doing, is maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to think about a lump sum. Hear me out.
This is Ben's website, the Cryptoverse. I was taking a look at this. We know that dynamically DCA-ing makes a lot more sense than just DCA-ing. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, there's a link in the description which describes both and shows you what the difference is.
With dynamic DCA-ing, let's say we started on midterm election day, which was November 8th, 2022 — not a bad time to start. We were almost at the bottom, roughly around that same time as far as Bitcoin goes. So November 8th, 2022. Let's say that you dynamically DCA'd $10 a day — or whatever. If $10 a day is a lot, no problem, just focus on the percentages.
If we did that and we only accumulated up to the 0.59 level, like what I do, then we would have invested at the very top $17,000, and we would have had Bitcoin roughly worth $79,000 — an increase of 355%. That's buying $10 every day. That's a lot of buying.
However, if you take a look at DCA-ing equal amounts — at this point you're invested, let's just do this one — $28,000 invested, $61,000 out. If you just did DCA equal amounts, never stopped, never increased, that 355% is only worth 189% at the top. And you would have tripled what you spent — $10,000 in, $30,000 out.
But I want to show you one more thing. What if you did this? Let's say you invested $28,000 over all that time frame. What if you just said, "You know what, it's midterm. I know what happens after midterms. I'm just going to do a little lump sum." And let's say instead of putting in $28,000 — because maybe over time that's how much you invest into it — maybe you just did one lump sum of like $10,000 bucks. And you didn't buy anything else. Nothing else. You know what you would have at the top? 565%. And you didn't have to spend $30,000 — you spent $10,000.
So as we go through this, and of course nobody knows, I just take a look at midterm elections and what Bitcoin has been doing. It's not so great. I take a look at this and think to myself, maybe this might be a good time to do a lump sum. Anyhow, that's just what I'm thinking about.
Q&A
Rob: Eddie's Reviews says AI is going to destroy the world, but we really need it. Yeah, maybe. I remember Y2K was supposed to shut down everything too — didn't really happen. Just go back in time to how many things were supposed to destroy us and we're still here. It's amazing.
And Anthony's correct — get off these platforms. Look, I've got no problems with using an exchange at some point to buy the things that you want. I like using Kraken — it's easy for me. Some people like others, and I'm an American so my choices are limited, to say the least. But the bright side is it kept me away from Binance, even though I understand they're going to get everybody paid back and it looks like it's actually happening. I just took a look at a report — that $6.5 billion, there was a withdrawal of somewhere around that same amount, around $7 billion or maybe $9 billion, I forget what it was, and there were no problems with people taking their funds off of Binance. Good for them.
For me, I've used Kraken, Coinbase in the past, and Gemini. And I also used this one called Voyager — remember that one? Such a great platform. Unfortunately, they did a $460 million uncollateralized loan to Three Arrows Capital. Now, off it goes. But Kraken's great. Kraken's been around — I think it's like the oldest exchange we have. It started in 2011 and it's never been hacked. I like that.
And Reyes is right — AI makes the average hacker a super hacker. Not only does AI do that, but it cuts both ways. As far as developers, it makes a super developer. As far as employees, it makes a super employee. As far as traders, same thing. I just think that people who are using AI like a super Google — "Hey Claude, tell me this," "Hey Grok, tell me this" — are missing out on like 95% of the great things AI can do.
The use of it is way easier than people make it out to be. I watch these YouTube videos about people explaining how to use Claude or how to use Grok and how to use these new AI agents, and it's just kind of cumbersome. You don't need all that stuff. All you've got to do is know how to start the thing, how to give it context and tell it what you want, and then there are a couple of pointers and you're off and running.
Jean Carlo — you might not remember him, but they call him "Crypto Dad." I think he was the head of the OCC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — I always forget. But he was a high-ranking official in the United States government. He made an interview a few days ago and he says it's time to give the hackers a bloody nose — he's talking 25 years. I agree. But we have to make somebody an example. I just find it amazing that North Korea can hack every single exchange out there and there are like no repercussions whatsoever. Like, let's say North Korea hacks all the banks in China — what do you think China would do? Yeah, exactly. So I don't know why no one stands up to them.
Silly says, "Who cares? Dip buying is working exceptionally well during the current flood storm." Dip buying — I don't know if it's working fantastic across the board. Take a look at some altcoins. If you're talking about Bitcoin, it worked pretty well buying below the 200-week moving average. But lately, I guess not too bad. I think the bigger thing is just deciding whether this is the bottom or not. And again, I don't think for most of us the buying is the issue — I think all of us are like pros at that. I think the big issue is the rotation into fiat, or some would call that selling. That could be the issue.
Mary's here from Chicago — everybody's good, Mary, thank you. "Not your keys, not your coin, Rob — do you want a power plant?" I don't, but I own a generator, and as a matter of fact I'm going to get another one for one of our other properties. We've got one here in Puerto Rico and it's great — works out flawlessly. Power's always going out here in Puerto Rico. So you've got to have a generator. The other property we have solar panels, and those suck. So yeah, I'll just have both of those.
Just reported from Arkham — the Mercado Bitcoin hacker holds $46 million of crypto. This includes $8.37 million of ETH, $8.24 million of Bitcoin, and $1.76 million of Pepe. Well, there you go. Everything starts off the same way: "No problems everybody, nothing to see here, move along citizen." And as time goes on, it's like, "Well, this one thing happened, it's going to be okay, funds are safe, we're just going to stop the withdrawals for a bit." And before you know it, "We really got to shut things down and I'm really sorry about that." It's always the same story.
"Machine intelligence is hardly comparable to Y2K." Well, no, but as far as the extent of what could happen — Y2K, everything was supposed to shut down. I remember that. I was working on the oncology unit, and it was around midnight on the 7-to-7 split, and one of the lights went off in one of the rooms and I was like, "Oh, this is it. This is where everything collapses." People back then really thought we were going to be like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Didn't happen. And as far as machine intelligence, I just don't know how far it can go.
Ben's here — hide your alts. Behind the scenes, I don't know if you guys realize just how much investing Ben does with altcoins. He talks about it all the time. He's like, "You know, if I could just talk about my Pepe coin positions, but no one wants to hear about it." That's how it is.
Just a little refresher for anyone who missed it: there's this place called Mercado Bitcoin and it is the largest crypto exchange in Latin America. They were compromised — it wasn't a hack, they said. Everything's okay, your funds are safe. But they're going to stop the withdrawals, for your safety. Nothing was hacked. And then from Arkham data, they're like, "Yeah, there was about $46 million that hackers already have." So that catches up.
Zikas Lobo says it right — Binance's reaction to the hack was actually great for crypto. It was very smooth. I was quite pleasantly surprised. And it was great because this is the first time — and CZ's not the CEO anymore, he had to step down after that KYC/AML issue with the US government, and a little prison time, these things happen. But he came out and the first post was, "Hey guys, looks like Binance got hacked. Kind of a bummer. We're going to have to stop some withdrawals, but don't worry, we have like $128 billion in reserves and it looks to be around $2.5 billion — drop in the bucket, don't worry about it." And later on it was $6.5 billion. And people started to take their money out, had no problems, and people got paid back. It was awesome. Good for them.
There's another clock bug that will wrap in 2038 — 32-bit architectures will run out of integers and return to 1971. See, there's always something. There's always a wall of worry that we take a look at.