coindesk.com
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.