Circle froze about $823 million in USDC linked to the Binance hack, the second-largest freeze in the issuer response to the theft.

USDC, like USDT, can be frozen by its issuer, which gives Circle a direct way to immobilise holdings identified as stolen.

That power did not cover everything: before the freezes, the attacker converted about $786 million in stablecoins into ETH and TRX.

Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, estimates total frozen funds at about $2.84 billion, while Binance says about $3 billion was frozen, against an overall hack estimated at about $6.3 billion.

Per LlamaRisk, about $59.9 million in stolen USDT was deposited as collateral on Aave, with about $43.8 million worth of ETH borrowed against it, a separate route through which stolen funds were used.

Elliptic estimates the attacker still controls about $3.33 billion in assets that cannot be frozen by a centralised token issuer, exceeding the total frozen amount.

Circle's freeze is therefore significant without being decisive: USDT and USDC can be frozen by their issuers, while ETH and Bitcoin have no central issuer with that same power, and the unfrozen billions remain the bigger story.