Circle, Tether Freeze $318K Tied to Bitget Hack; Bulk Sits in Unfreezable ETH

Circle and Tether blacklisted a wallet labeled “Bitget Exploiter 8,” freezing roughly $318,000 in combined USDC and USDT tied to the recent Bitget hot-wallet breach. Two independent outlets, Decrypt and CoinDesk, report the same wallet label and the same dollar figure. Most of the stolen funds, however, had already been converted into ETH before the freeze could take effect, and ether cannot be blacklisted the way centralized stablecoins can.

What Two Sources Confirm

Both reports agree on the core mechanics. Circle and Tether identified a wallet address associated with the Bitget exploit and added it to their respective blacklist functions, locking the USDC and USDT balances held there. The combined frozen amount, about $318,000, matches across both accounts.

Neither issuer can touch funds once they leave their own token contracts. The attacker moved the majority of the haul into ETH ahead of the blacklist action. That conversion is the reason the frozen sum represents only a small slice of what was taken.

This freeze follows Bitget’s own confirmation of a hot-wallet breach totaling $351.6 million, a figure Cryptaur previously verified against three independent outlets. The $318,000 blacklisted here is a fraction of that total, underscoring how little of a large exploit issuers can typically recover once funds move on-chain into non-blacklistable assets.

Why ETH Stops the Freeze Tool Cold

USDC and USDT sit on smart contracts controlled by Circle and Tether. Both issuers can add an address to a blacklist and halt transfers from it. Ether has no such central switch. Once stolen stablecoins are swapped for ETH on a decentralized exchange, the issuer’s freeze tool has nothing left to act on.

This is a known pattern in stablecoin-related hacks. Attackers who move quickly into ETH or other non-blacklistable assets routinely outrun issuer response times, even when that response arrives within hours.

What Remains Unconfirmed

Neither source specifies the exact timing between the Bitget breach, the attacker’s swap into ETH, and the blacklist action by Circle and Tether. Neither report states what share of the $351.6 million total the $318,000 freeze represents as a percentage, nor whether Bitget itself requested the blacklist or the issuers acted independently.

Both Decrypt and CoinDesk describe the same wallet label, the same frozen figure, and the same explanation for why the bulk of the funds escaped. That overlap is enough to treat the freeze itself as confirmed. The finer sequencing of events is not yet independently verified beyond what these two outlets report.

Read more: Bitget Confirms $351.6M Hot-Wallet Breach, Three Outlets Match the Figure

For holders of stablecoins, the episode is a reminder that blacklisting works only while funds remain inside the issuer’s own token. Once an attacker converts to ETH, BTC, or another asset without a central switch, that $318,000 figure is likely close to the ceiling of what issuers can claw back on this particular exploit.

Sources

• decrypt.co
• coindesk.com