Circle and Tether freeze hacker’s wallet after $351 million Bitget heist

Circle and Tether freeze hacker's wallet — Major stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have frozen assets in a wallet belonging to an alleged hacker behind a massive exploit on the Bitget crypto exchange.

The move, confirmed by on-chain data on Friday, targeted an address labeled ‘Bitget Exploiter 8.’ The wallet held approximately $318,000 worth of Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC stablecoins. Both companies used their centralized freeze functions to blacklist the address, preventing the stablecoins from being moved.

This intervention, however, addresses only a tiny fraction of the total funds stolen. The broader attack on Bitget, which occurred on Thursday, resulted in losses estimated at $351.6 million. Most of the stolen assets remain in over 63,000 ether (ETH), a cryptocurrency for which no central entity possesses a freeze mechanism.

The swift action by Circle follows previous criticism of its response time during the Drift protocol hack in April. In that incident, critics argued the firm was too slow to act, allowing approximately $232 million in stolen USDC to move across different blockchain networks.