Tether and Circle froze stolen Binance funds within an hour
Elliptic says about 44% of the $6.43 billion taken from Binance is frozen or seized, but none of the stolen bitcoin has been stopped.
The facts
- Hackers took $6.43 billion from Binance on Oct. 29, according to analytics firm Elliptic. About 44% is now frozen or seized, against about 3% after the Bybit theft last year.
- Tether froze the stolen USDT 37 minutes after it reached the main hacker wallet, and Circle froze all $823 million of stolen USDC minutes later, per Elliptic.
- Arbitrum's 12-person Security Council needed nine signatures to move 8,425 ETH and 74.6 million ARB out of the hackers' control without their key.
- None of the 18,270 stolen bitcoin has been frozen, and neither has the stolen ether on Ethereum itself.
Case notes · Danny's take
Why it matters
Crypto's founding promise is that only the key holder can move a coin. This theft shows how often that promise now has exceptions. A coin is only as unstoppable as the switch behind it: an issuer, a council, or nobody. Stablecoin and layer-2 users rarely check who holds that switch until the day it is used.
For traders
Don't read a freeze as a recovery. The frozen balances still sit in the hackers' wallet, so watch on-chain whether they move, are returned or are destroyed and reissued. Also watch the stolen bitcoin, which no one has frozen.
For builders
If you build on a layer-2 or issue a token, document who can freeze or upgrade what, and how fast. L2BEAT says 79 of the 83 layer-2 networks it tracks give users no window to withdraw before an upgrade takes effect. Users will start asking about that.
Not financial advice. Do your own investigation.
This story was summarised with AI from Unchained's reporting and checked against our editorial policy. Danny's take reflects his views. Disclaimer.
Danny Walter
Founder of Moon Republic, Volt Terminal and Moon Republic Academy. Author of The Market Is a Crime Scene and After the Applause.