Circle Freezes $800M in USDC After Binance Flags Possible Hack
CRCL sits 55% above its 52-week low of $49.9.
Summary
Circle froze more than $800 million in stablecoin currency after Binance said it was investigating a potential security issue, with Tether freezing nearly $1.57 billion and Ripple roughly $200 million — over $2.38 billion total. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao wrote on X that the incident 'looked like a hack,' though Binance said user funds were safe. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company is tracking reports of a potential exploit and will support the investigation. This lands five weeks after Circle expanded its Binance partnership to a five-year USDC promotion deal and sold Binance $100 million of stock at $80.84 a share — the exchange is now both a major distribution channel and a source of headline risk for USDC. The size of the freeze relative to Circle's USDC circulation makes this a real operational and reputational test, not routine noise.
At the time of this announcement, CRCL was trading at $77.12 on NYSE in the Crypto Assets sector, with a market capitalization of approximately $20.4B. The 52-week trading range was $49.90 to $140.00. This news item was assessed with negative market sentiment and an importance score of 8 out of 10. Source: Reuters.