Circle and Tether freeze $318K of Bitget hack funds as $387.5M slips away - Cryptopolitan

Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have frozen roughly $318,000 in funds tied to the recent Bitget hack, according to Cryptopolitan. The action means the two largest stablecoin operators moved to blacklist addresses linked to the incident, preventing those specific balances from being transferred.

The broader picture is more sobering. The report notes that approximately $387.5 million linked to the hack remains outside the reach of these freezes. The gap illustrates a structural limit of stablecoin-level intervention: issuers can only immobilize assets that sit in tokens they control, such as USDC and USDT, and only on addresses they can identify and blacklist.

For market observers, the episode highlights the growing role of centralized stablecoin issuers as de facto enforcement points in crypto, while also showing how quickly funds can move beyond their reach. What to watch: whether additional addresses are frozen, how the remaining funds are traced across chains and mixers, and whether exchanges and analytics firms coordinate further recovery efforts.