Circle and Tether Freeze Stablecoins Tied to Bitget Hack—But Most Funds Slip Away

In brief

• Circle and Tether froze a wallet tied to the Bitget hack, blacklisting roughly 99,990 USDC and 218,023 USDT (~$318,000) at the contract level; Circle acted at 05:00 UTC Friday, with Tether following via its multisig hours later.
• The wallet's ~170 ETH stayed untouched—issuers can freeze their own tokens but not Ethereum—and trackers show other exploiter addresses still hold 63,000+ ETH beyond reach.
• It's a small dent in a breach pegged at roughly $387 million, with Lazarus Group a suspected culprit and Bitget's $464 million protection fund set to cover losses.

Circle and Tether have frozen a wallet linked to the massive Bitget exchange hack, cutting off roughly $318,000 in stablecoins from the attacker, though the bulk of the stolen fortune moved beyond reach before issuers could act.

Blockchain data shows Circle blacklisted the address, labeled "Bitget Exploiter 8" on Etherscan, at 05:00 UTC Friday, using the built-in freeze function in its USDC token contract.

Roughly seven hours later, Tether followed suit, with a signer confirming a transaction on its multisig wallet that added the same address to USDT's blacklist. Together the actions locked about 99,990 USDC and 218,023 USDT in place.