Circle Freezes $318,000 Linked to $351.6 Million Bitget Hack
The frozen USDT and USDC represent a small portion of the assets affected in the security incident. Most linked funds remained in Ether, which stablecoin issuers cannot freeze.
Circle froze about $318,000 in stablecoins linked to the Bitget security breach, while most of the affected funds remained in Ether beyond stablecoin issuers’ control.
The blacklisted Ethereum wallet held 218,023 USDT and 99,990 USDC, along with 170.47 ETH. The stablecoin freeze covers only a small portion of the roughly $351.6 million in assets Bitget said were affected.
Other wallets linked to the exploit held more than 63,000 ETH. Circle and Tether can block their tokens, but neither issuer controls transfers of ETH.
Bitget said it detected unauthorized transfers at 2:31 p.m. ET Thursday (18:31 UTC). The exchange said a backend system in its wallet infrastructure was compromised, allowing transaction data to be spoofed and authorization procedures to be triggered.
Bitget said its cold wallets were unaffected and that its User Protection Fund held more than $464 million. Deposits and trading remained operational, while withdrawals were temporarily suspended during the investigation.
