Circle and Tether on Friday froze part of the assets of an address linked to the Bitget hack, approximately $318,000 in stablecoins. The amount remains marginal compared to the $387.5 million stolen. Most of the loot is held in ether, an asset that no issuer can block.
In brief
- Circle blacklisted an address labeled “Bitget Exploiter 8” at 05:00 UTC on Friday, which held 218,023 USDT and 99,990 USDC.
- Tether banned the same wallet in the process, according to security company MistTrack.
- Other addresses of the hacker keep more than 63,000 ETH, which no issuer can freeze.
A freezing of 318,000 dollars in the face of 387.5 million stolen
The hack suffered by Bitget on Thursday cost $387.5 million, according to the platform’s latest report. Circle blacklisted one of the addresses in the exploit on Friday at 05:00 UTC. Tether did the same shortly after, according to MistTrack, cited by CoinDesk.
The affected address, which the Etherscan explorer labels “Bitget Exploiter 8,” contained 170.47 ETH, 218,023 USDT, and 99,990 USDC. These blockages freeze the $318,000 in stablecoins it contains. A stablecoin, a token backed by a currency, can be blacklisted by its issuing company: the funds remain visible on the blockchain, but stop moving.
On the scale of the file, the dragnet remains modest. The $318,000 tied up weighs less than 0.1% of the $387.5 million stolen. Circle and Tether can only act on their own tokens, USDT and USDC.
Why over 63,000 ETH remains out of reach
The bulk of the money is elsewhere. MistTrack lists hacker addresses that still hold more than 63,000 ETH, or around $170 million. No transmitter can freeze ether. The blockchain has no administrator for its native currency, and therefore no blacklist where these funds can be registered.
This limit does not prevent mass freezes. Tether uses it on a large scale: more than $514 million blocked in one month, according to BlockSec data. But the measure only ever affects the tokens present on the targeted address, not the ether it contains.
Without being able to seize these funds, the game comes down to traceability. MistTrack tracks the movements of the 63,000 ETH, looking for a conversion or a deposit on a platform, two stages where the loot can still be intercepted.
Drift, the precedent which explains Circle’s reaction
Last April, the Drift protocol lost $285 million. The hacker converted a large portion of the funds into USDC, then transferred $232 million from Solana to Ethereum via CCTP, Circle’s cross-chain protocol. Investigator ZachXBT denounced the issuer’s slowness in blacklisting addresses.
This time the answer came quickly. It took around ten hours between the detection of the hack, Thursday at 6:31 p.m. UTC, and the blacklisting by Circle, Friday at 5:00 a.m. UTC. This speed has a downside. Blocking funds without a legal basis may expose the issuer to recourse, which highlights Circle’s usual caution.
The Bitget folder remains open. Withdrawals remain suspended pending verifications, and the platform promises a complete technical report. The rest will depend on the destination of the 63,000 ETH still in the wild: each deposit on a platform or conversion into stablecoins will reopen an interception window. After a record quarter of hacking, this duel between tracking and laundering will show whether the cooperation of issuers weighs on these issues.
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