Circle and Tether step in to freeze hacker wallet after massive Bitget crypto heist

Circle and Tether have frozen stablecoins in a wallet linked to Thursday's $351.6 million Bitget hack, though the amount is a small fraction of the total.

Circle blacklisted the address, which Etherscan labels "Bitget Exploiter 8," at 05:00 UTC Friday, onchain data shows. The wallet holds about 170.47 ETH, 218,023 USDT and 99,990 USDC. Blockchain security firm MistTrack said Tether has since banned the wallet too.

That leaves roughly $318,000 in stablecoins stuck. MistTrack's tracker shows other exploiter addresses still holding 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, spoofed transaction data and triggered its authorization process to move funds out. She ruled out a private key compromise. Chen said Bitget's user protection fund, which holds over $464 million, covers the loss.

Circle's quick action contrasts with its response to April's $285 million Drift hack. In that case, the attacker moved about $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum using Circle's own 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.