ZachXBT Accuses Circle of Delaying $420M USDC Freezes

Onchain investigator ZachXBT has accused Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, of failing to freeze more than $420 million in illicit funds across 15 incidents since 2022, spotlighting delays that allowed hackers to move assets through the company's infrastructure. The criticism, detailed in a public thread released on April 3, 2026, centers on Circle's handling of the Drift Protocol exploit on April 1, 2026, which resulted in the theft of approximately $285 million from the Solana-based decentralized perpetuals exchange.

In the Drift incident, attributed by blockchain analytics firms to North Korea-linked hackers including the Lazarus Group, attackers drained Drift's main vault using oracle manipulation and a compromised admin key. They executed 31 withdrawals in about 12 minutes, converting much of the stolen assets into USDC and bridging roughly $232 million from Solana to Ethereum via Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol. The transfers occurred over more than 100 transactions spanning six hours during U.S. business hours. According to ZachXBT, Circle took no action to freeze the funds during this period, enabling the attackers to complicate recovery efforts by...