Circle, Tether freeze funds impacted by potential Binance 'security issue' - CNBC
Several crypto firms, including Circle and Tether, have frozen approximately $1.8 billion in funds following a potential security issue at cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
The world's largest crypto exchange by trading volumes has not explicitly confirmed an exploit as of writing time. In a social media post, Binance stated it was investigating "a potential security issue" on its trading platform.
Funds frozen
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire announced Thursday evening that his company had frozen more than $800 million in USD Coin associated with the incident. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino separately confirmed freezing over $1.5 billion of its stablecoin that may have been related to the potential breach.
Broader impact
Binance co-founder Yi He revealed that Ripple helped halt $200 million worth of funds linked to the possible attack. However, crypto data provider Arkham Intelligence identified nearly $6 billion in digital assets connected to 55 wallet addresses potentially involved in the exploit.
Bitcoin slid more than 3% following the executives' statements, breaking below $80,000. Ether fell nearly 4%, while solana shed about 3%. Shares of Circle also tumbled approximately 5% in after-hours trading on Thursday.
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