Circle Internet Group and Tether froze roughly $1.8 billion worth of funds tied to a potential hack on cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
The world's largest crypto exchange by daily trading volumes has not explicitly confirmed that it has suffered an exploit as of writing time. In a social media post, the company said it was investigating "a potential security issue" on its trading platform.
"Our teams are aware of reports of a potential security issue and are actively investigating," a Binance spokesperson said in a statement. "Rest assured that user funds are completely safe. Our security teams are reviewing all relevant information with urgency, and we will provide updates through official Binance channels as soon as we have verified information."
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said Thursday evening in a social media post that the company had frozen more than 800 million in USD Coin associated with the incident. USDT stablecoin issuer Tether CEO Paolo Adroino also said in a statement published on X that his firm had frozen more than 1.5 billion of its stablecoin that may have been related to a potential breach.
Bitcoin — the most widely followed cryptocurrency in the world — slid more than 3% following the executives' statements, breaking below $80,000.
Shares of Circle also tumbled about 5% in off-hours trading on Thursday.
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