Following a significant security incident at Binance, multiple cryptocurrency platforms and stablecoin issuers have coordinated to freeze stolen funds in an unprecedented industry-wide response.
Ripple froze approximately $200 million in RLUSD, its dollar-backed stablecoin, according to Binance co-CEO Yi He. The freeze came after the attacker swapped 36 million RLUSD for 15,439 ETH before the freezes took full effect, with an additional 52.54 million RLUSD remaining unfrozen at the time reports were published.
World Liberty Financial and BitGo moved quickly to freeze $27 million in USD1 and 48 million WLFI tokens. BitGo confirmed it found no security issues on its own platform and is working to freeze USD1 at a specific address identified by World Liberty Financial.
Industry-Wide Freeze Effort
The largest freezes came from the leading stablecoin issuers. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company froze more than 1.567 billion USDT linked to the incident, while Circle froze approximately $823 million in USDC. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said his team is blocking sends to compromised wallets and has reached out to Binance to offer assistance.
Additional freezes include approximately 3.4 million FDUSD frozen by First Digital and 74.56 million ARB tokens frozen by Arbitrum's Security Council. Binance reported that the total amount frozen has reached approximately $3 billion.
Remaining Vulnerability
Analysis by TRM Labs indicates that approximately $2.4 billion in assets remain beyond the reach of stablecoin issuers, consisting primarily of over 420,000 ETH and 18,270 BTC. This gap reflects the limitation of freezing centralized tokens while native cryptocurrencies like ETH and BTC cannot be frozen by issuers.
Binance has paused deposits and withdrawals, with co-CEO Yi He stating that the exchange will enable withdrawals once its security scan is complete.
