CASE STUDY | How This Hack Set a Precedent for Freezing Stolen Stablecoins Without Legal Request

Circle and Tether recently moved to freeze stablecoins linked to the $387.5 million Bitget hack, a response that marks a notable shift from the handling of the earlier Drift Protocol exploit and suggests the industry has become quicker to act when stolen funds enter centralized stablecoin infrastructure.

Circle blacklisted a wallet linked to the Bitget attacker at 0500 GMT, hours after the exchange detected un-authorized transfers from its hot wallets. The wallet contained about 99,990 USDC and 218,023 USDT, worth roughly $318,000, according to on-chain data.

Tether subsequently blacklisted the same address.

STABLECOINS | Leading Stablecoin Issuers Freeze Over $300K Stolen in the Latest Bitget Hack

The intervention came after BitGet identified the attack on September 24 2026 and began tracing the stolen assets. The exchange later raised its estimate of affected assets to about $387.5 million saying the higher figure reflected additional assets identified on networks including TRON and ZCash rather than further unauthorized transfers.

The response contrasts with the April 2026 Drift hack when about $230 million in stolen USDC was moved from Solana to Ethereum through Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol. On-chain investigator, ZachXBT, criticized Circle at the time for failing to freeze the funds despite having several hours to act.