Circle and Tether step in to freeze hacker wallet after massive Bitget crypto heist - CoinDesk

The involvement of Circle and Tether in freezing a wallet tied to the Bitget incident highlights a distinctive feature of dollar-pegged stablecoins: issuers can restrict tokens at the contract level. Because USDC and USDT are issued by centralized entities, those issuers can block addresses, which makes the funds far harder to move or convert through regulated venues.

For the broader market, the episode illustrates both the resilience and the limits of that model. Tracing and freezing stolen assets can help preserve value for affected users and may support recovery efforts. At the same time, the hacker's ability to route funds through decentralized tools or privacy-focused services remains a constraint, and freezing cannot undo the original breach.

What to watch: how much of the stolen funds is ultimately recovered, whether exchanges and issuers coordinate further, and how this case shapes the ongoing debate over how much control stablecoin issuers should hold over their networks.