Circle and Tether block $318,000 tied to Bitget exploiter address
Security & Exploits ·
Stablecoin issuers cut off a wallet linked to the Bitget hack, but the bulk of stolen value remains beyond their reach in ether.
Circle and Tether have blacklisted a wallet identified as "Bitget Exploiter 8," locking down 218,023 USDT and 99,990 USDC, a combined sum near $318,000, according to wublockchain.xyz. Circle's blacklisting action was recorded at 05:00 UTC on September 25, with blockchain tracking service MistTrack later confirming that Tether had applied a similar freeze to the same address.
The intervention illustrates both the reach and the limits of stablecoin issuers' control over illicit funds. Because USDT and USDC operate on centralized ledgers that issuers can update, Circle and Tether can effectively disable specific addresses from moving those tokens. That mechanism only works, however, on assets still denominated in their own stablecoins — it offers no leverage once funds have been converted into other cryptocurrencies.
That limitation is central to this case. MistTrack data shows that addresses tied to the same attacker are holding more than 63,000 ETH, a stash that neither Circle nor Tether has any technical ability to freeze. The $318,000 in blocked stablecoins therefore represents only a fragment of the total funds believed to have been taken in the exploit.
A separate account of the episode, cited by decrypt.co, corroborates the freeze figures while noting that the attacker had already moved most of the stolen assets into ETH before the blacklisting occurred — a sequencing detail that underscores why the frozen amount is so small relative to the reported scale of the breach.
What remains unresolved is the ultimate fate of the 63,000-plus ETH still under the attacker's control, and whether any further addresses tied to the exploit will be identified and blacklisted. Also unclear is whether additional exchanges, custodians, or on-chain analytics firms will move to flag related wallets as the funds continue to be tracked.