Circle and Tether freeze funds linked to possible security issue on Binance
Circle, Tether and other companies have blocked $2.54 billion, according to CNBC Markets, while Binance investigates the case and suspended trading on Binance Alpha.
BY THE X-TRADER NEWS NEWSROOM · REPORTING FROM CNBC MARKETS · 2 MIN
On Thursday, Circle, Tether and other companies in the sector froze $2.54 billion linked to a possible hack on Binance, according to CNBC Markets. The broker, however, did not explicitly confirm that it had suffered an exploit.
Binance only said it was investigating a “potential security issue” and temporarily suspended trading on Binance Alpha. Changpeng Zhao, the company's CZ founder and former CEO, said the incident appeared to be a hack and said he expected full coverage of customer funds.
Among individual figures, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire reported that the company has frozen more than $800 million in USDC. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company has frozen more than $1.5 billion in USDT possibly linked to the breach. Yi He, co-founder of Binance, stated that Ripple helped stop the movement of US$200 million. Investing.com, in turn, cited US$2.38 billion frozen by Tether and Circle, a value that differs from the US$2.54 billion indicated by CNBC Markets. The material found does not explain the difference.
Arkham Intelligence estimates around US$6 billion in bitcoin, ether, solana and stablecoins linked to 55 wallet addresses, and states that the amount effectively blocked may represent only a fraction of that amount. According to CNBC Markets, Arkham uses public blockchain data and receives reports from the community.
The case adds to other recent episodes of theft in the sector. Also according to CNBC Markets, Bybit lost around US$1.5 billion in a hack in 2025, and Bitget lost more than US$350 million in digital assets in a recent theft.
The markets reacted. Bitcoin fell more than 3%, to below US$80,000, ether fell around 4% and solana, around 3%. Circle shares fell about 5% in after-hours trading Thursday. The episode also raises a fundamental question: the possibility of blocking balances depends, in practice, on the decision of private companies, and this weighs as much as technology on user trust.
What changes for the investor
This text does not provide a purchase or sale recommendation or price projections. What the case highlights are two risks that crypto investors tend to price in: exposure to brokers and dependence on stablecoin issuers to freeze or release funds. The reaction of Circle's shares shows that listed companies can feel the effect of incidents of this type. As long as Binance does not detail what happened and the final amount is not known, the picture remains incomplete, and it is worth following the official confirmation from the broker and the values that the issuers disclose.
Automatically translated from Portuguese.
