Circle Internet Group and Tether froze about $1.8 billion in funds that may be tied to a potential hack of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, according to the source.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said in a social media post on Thursday evening that Circle had frozen more than $800 million in USD Coin associated with the incident. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement on X that Tether had frozen more than $1.5 billion of its stablecoin that may have been related to a potential breach.
Binance has not explicitly confirmed an exploit. In a social media post, the company said it was investigating "a potential security issue" on its trading platform. A Binance spokesperson said, "Rest assured that user funds are completely safe."
Bitcoin fell more than 3% after the executives' statements, dropping below $80,000. Shares of Circle fell about 5% in off-hours trading on Thursday.