Circle and Tether freeze stablecoins in wallet linked to $351.6 million Bitget hack

Circle and Tether froze stablecoins in a wallet linked to Thursday's $351.6 million Bitget hack. Circle blacklisted the address at 05:00 UTC Friday. Etherscan labels the address "Bitget Exploiter 8." Onchain data shows the wallet held about 170.47 ETH. The wallet also held 218,023 USDT and 99,990 USDC. MistTrack said Tether has since banned the wallet too. Roughly $318,000 in stablecoins remained stuck. Other exploiter addresses still held more than 63,000 ETH, which no issuer can freeze. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said attackers compromised a backend system in the exchange's wallet infrastructure. Chen said the attackers spoofed transaction data and triggered the authorization process to move funds out. Chen ruled out a private key compromise. Chen said Bitget's user protection fund covers the loss. The fund holds over $464 million. Circle acted faster than it did after April's $285 million Drift hack. The attacker moved about $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum through Circle's cross-chain transfer protocol. Critics including ZachXBT said Circle could have moved faster to blacklist wallets and freeze funds. Circle said it freezes assets when legally required.