The freeze button isn’t a justice button—it’s a customer-relations button.
When Binance was hacked, Tether froze about 1.567 billion USDT, and Circle froze about 823 million USDC. A bunch of people started hyping stablecoins as “the industry’s safety net.”
Today, Laura Shin reposted a comment from Jonty at Pangolin Intelligence, who put it bluntly: Circle acted fast this time because Binance is a core business partner, and Drift isn’t. The gist of the original was: “Circle has relationships of its own to protect. Call this what it is, and don’t beat around the bush.”
Then there’s Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin, which was drained of roughly $49 million, according to Chainalysis. Chainalysis said it helped freeze nearly $10 million, with Tether doing most of the work, freezing over $9 million. Separately, an on-chain account tallied figures from Bitquery data and found that, at several points that day, Circle hadn’t frozen a single cent of the roughly $4.29 million in USDC/EURC.
Same button: when a major client gets hit, funds are frozen at lightning speed; when a small platform or DeFi protocol gets hit, it’s a matter of luck. That’s VIP service, not decentralization.
So don’t treat “stablecoins can be frozen” as your insurance policy. If you’re not a major client of the issuer, you’ll be at the back of the queue when something goes wrong. If you keep your U on a small exchange or in an obscure protocol, how much can be recovered after a hack depends on whether they think your call is worth answering.
#稳定币 #USDC
When Binance was hacked, Tether froze about 1.567 billion USDT, and Circle froze about 823 million USDC. A bunch of people started hyping stablecoins as “the industry’s safety net.”
Today, Laura Shin reposted a comment from Jonty at Pangolin Intelligence, who put it bluntly: Circle acted fast this time because Binance is a core business partner, and Drift isn’t. The gist of the original was: “Circle has relationships of its own to protect. Call this what it is, and don’t beat around the bush.”
Then there’s Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin, which was drained of roughly $49 million, according to Chainalysis. Chainalysis said it helped freeze nearly $10 million, with Tether doing most of the work, freezing over $9 million. Separately, an on-chain account tallied figures from Bitquery data and found that, at several points that day, Circle hadn’t frozen a single cent of the roughly $4.29 million in USDC/EURC.
Same button: when a major client gets hit, funds are frozen at lightning speed; when a small platform or DeFi protocol gets hit, it’s a matter of luck. That’s VIP service, not decentralization.
So don’t treat “stablecoins can be frozen” as your insurance policy. If you’re not a major client of the issuer, you’ll be at the back of the queue when something goes wrong. If you keep your U on a small exchange or in an obscure protocol, how much can be recovered after a hack depends on whether they think your call is worth answering.
#稳定币 #USDC