ZachXBT Accuses Circle of USDC Freeze Failures in Thefts

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT accused Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, of repeated compliance failures in responding to cryptocurrency thefts, alleging that the company allowed more than $420 million in stolen funds to move freely since 2022. The claims, detailed in a thread posted on X on April 3, 2026, center on 15 documented cases, including the recent $280 million exploit of the Solana-based Drift Protocol on April 1, 2026.

In the Drift incident, attackers compromised the protocol's administrative permissions through a sophisticated social engineering attack involving presigned transactions and durable nonces. This enabled them to drain the main vault in about 12 minutes, stealing assets including a significant amount of USDC. The exploiter then bridged approximately $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum using Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) across more than 100 transactions over roughly six hours during U.S. business hours. ZachXBT stated that Circle had ample time to freeze the funds but took no action, despite the exploit being publicly reported shortly after it occurred. The attack indirectly affected at least 10 other DeFi protocols on...