#TetherFreezesUSDTLinkedToLedgerTheft
$92.9M drained from 311 wallets. Tether froze about $10M of it, roughly 11%. Frozen is not returned.
What's established:
• Bitquery traced the losses across TRON, BTC, ETH, BNB Chain and Polygon
• Suspected cause: tampered devices sold through CryptoBilis, a Southeast Asian Ledger reseller. Ledger halted sales and has not published an attack mechanism
• Tether blocked 37 addresses; 20 hold the $10M in USDT
What the headlines skip:
• Around $15M was swapped into USDD, which Tether can't freeze
• Some funds went through Tornado Cash
• BTC and ETH have no issuer freeze at all
Takeaway: a stablecoin freeze only works on stablecoins, and only if the thief is slow. The bigger issue is supply-chain trust. If your device came from a third-party reseller, the safe move is a new device from the manufacturer and a freshly generated recovery phrase.
Should stablecoin issuers be the first line of defense after thefts?
Not financial advice. $USDT
$92.9M drained from 311 wallets. Tether froze about $10M of it, roughly 11%. Frozen is not returned.
What's established:
• Bitquery traced the losses across TRON, BTC, ETH, BNB Chain and Polygon
• Suspected cause: tampered devices sold through CryptoBilis, a Southeast Asian Ledger reseller. Ledger halted sales and has not published an attack mechanism
• Tether blocked 37 addresses; 20 hold the $10M in USDT
What the headlines skip:
• Around $15M was swapped into USDD, which Tether can't freeze
• Some funds went through Tornado Cash
• BTC and ETH have no issuer freeze at all
Takeaway: a stablecoin freeze only works on stablecoins, and only if the thief is slow. The bigger issue is supply-chain trust. If your device came from a third-party reseller, the safe move is a new device from the manufacturer and a freshly generated recovery phrase.
Should stablecoin issuers be the first line of defense after thefts?
Not financial advice. $USDT