Stablecoin issuer Circle has faced criticism for freezing approximately $5 million associated with North Korea’s Lazarus Group. The hacker organization is accountable for several prominent Bitcoin breaches and the postponement of freezing these assets has elicited significant criticism.
On September 14, blockchain investigator ZachXBT disclosed that stablecoin issuers, including Tether, Circle, Paxos, and Techteryx, blacklisted two wallets associated with the Lazarus Group, which had around $4.96 million in assets.
Nonetheless, these wallets still hold $720,000 in DAI and $313,000 in Ethereum, which remain unencumbered. The Lazarus Group laundered more than $200 million from 25 crypto-related thefts from 2020 to 2023.
A cumulative total of $6.98 million has been frozen to date, with $1.65 million retained across various exchanges. ZachXBT chastised Circle for its sluggish reaction in freezing the Lazarus Group’s assets, contending that it revealed a deficiency in its dedication to safeguarding the bitcoin ecosystem from nefarious entities.
He alleged that Circle prioritized revenues over security and condemned the absence of an incident response team. The Lazarus Group has been associated with several major cryptocurrency thefts, including the recent $20 million breach of the Indodax exchange.
