Circle and Tether froze a wallet tied to the Bitget hack, locking up about $318,000 in stablecoins. Bitget has since raised its breach estimate to $387.5 million and opened a bounty program to recover the remaining stolen funds.
Circle and Tether have frozen stablecoins in a wallet linked to Thursday's Bitget hack, though the amount covers only a small slice of the theft. Circle blacklisted the address at 05:00 UTC Friday, which Etherscan labels "Bitget Exploiter 8." The wallet holds about 170.47 ETH, 218,023 USDT and 99,990 USDC, and blockchain security firm MistTrack said Tether has since banned it too.
That leaves roughly $318,000 in stablecoins stuck. Other exploiter addresses still hold more than 63,000 ETH that no issuer can freeze. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said attackers compromised a backend system in the exchange's wallet infrastructure, spoofed transaction data and triggered its authorization process to move funds out, ruling out a private key compromise.
Breach estimate climbs to $387.5 million
Bitget has since raised the estimated value of assets affected to about $387.5 million, up from an initial $351.6 million. Chen said the revised figure reflects a more complete accounting of transfers, including Zcash and TRON assets left out of the original count, and stressed it does not represent new unauthorized transfers. The exchange said its security team has identified the attack path and the method used to bypass its controls, though it has not disclosed technical details.
Bounty program targets stolen funds
Bitget has also launched a Recovery Bounty Program, offering participants 5% of funds they help freeze and another 5% of funds they directly help recover. Mandiant and SlowMist are assisting with the forensic investigation, and Bitget is using Bybit's LazarusBounty platform as part of the effort. Withdrawals remain paused, with Bitget saying it will announce a restoration plan by September 26 at 4:00 UTC.
A faster response than the Drift hack
Circle's quick move contrasts with its handling of April's $285 million Drift hack. In that case, an attacker moved about $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum using Circle's own cross-chain transfer protocol. Critics including ZachXBT said Circle could have moved faster to blacklist wallets and freeze funds; Circle said it freezes assets when legally required. Bitget's exploiters drained the exchange's hot wallet infrastructure directly, leaving Circle and Tether to chase whatever stablecoins the attackers left behind.
Sources: CoinDesk, Crypto Briefing
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