Whale.io and more USDC wallets frozen by Circle?

[NotATether]

Everyone's gotta stop using this stablecoin trash. I don't like the idea of one overlord company who has the power to single-handedly destroy my entire business model just because there's a court case.

Companies need to start actively refusing USDC, and I, for my part, will start converting all my USDC to Polygon L2.

[crwth]

It's one of the reasons USDC is more trusted by businesses: they comply with various regulations, etc. Being licensed means they must comply with the courts and law-enforced subpoenas. What needs to be clear is whether it was ordered by a judge, was preemptive, or was anything else.

Everyone's gotta stop using this stablecoin trash. I don't like the idea of one overlord company who has the power to single-handedly destroy my entire business model just because there's a court case.

Companies need to start actively refusing USDC, and I, for my part, will start converting all my USDC to Polygon L2.

I don't like the power being a monopoly on this one, but it's helpful if you were the one affected by it. As something happened to your business, and your USDC was stolen or something. They can freeze it and give it back to you. It's on a case-by-case basis, IMO.

[Taskford]

USDC became "more popular" after Tether decided not to comply with MiCA rules in the EU. Users from the EU will not return to USDT, although the MiCA regulation is not strictly enforced.

Regarding the news, we all know the risks (or at least we should know) of using stablecoins, but people always think it won't happen to them. Until it does.

What tricky part is many people think that stable coins is safe to hold, but they forgot to understand that same situation like this on where they freeze the asset of this companies exist.

We already saws a good example that USDC or those stable coins is not really a safe coin to hold.

Yeah people often says that those situation will not going to happen to them and that kind of mindset might caught them then they realize when everything is late then they are affected of those fund freezing for whatever reasons.

[examplens]

What tricky part is many people think that stable coins is safe to hold, but they forgot to understand that same situation like this on where they freeze the asset of this companies exist.

We already saws a good example that USDC or those stable coins is not really a safe coin to hold.

Yeah people often says that those situation will not going to happen to them and that kind of mindset might caught them then they realize when everything is late then they are affected of those fund freezing for whatever reasons.

DAI is also a stablecoin, but there is no blocking of coins there. USDC was created by Coinbase, with which I have experience with various pointless restrictions and limits, so I will never use it. At least not until there are better alternatives.

Stablecoins are a necessary evil, especially when trading, so we cannot ignore them.

[Rikafip]

DAI is also a stablecoin, but there is no blocking of coins there. USDC was created by Coinbase, with which I have experience with various pointless restrictions and limits, so I will never use it. At least not until there are better alternatives.

I have to admit that I never used DAI, even though it should be a safer option. Probably because people in my country that I trade with still prefer either USDT (less than before) or USDC (more often now since USDT got restricted).

Stablecoins are a necessary evil, especially when trading, so we cannot ignore them.

Yep. The way I deal with them is that I never hold large amounts for too long, in order to minimize the risk. 

[Skjadoon]

ZachXBT posted this big news in the telegram channel Investigations by ZachXBT

BREAKING: Circle froze the USDC balance of 16 hot wallets for various businesses late yesterday.

I spoke with one of the affected businesses directly and they stated it was due to an ongoing US civil case whose details are not yet disclosed.

I reviewed the onchain activity and the exchanges, casinos, forex businesses do not appear to be related at all to each other.

Why was the request not properly reviewed by Circle?

For those unfamiliar a crypto business has a hot wallet to process the bulk of transactions for its users.

An analyst with basic tools could have identified within minutes that these were operational business wallets from the thousands of transactions they process.

Now their business operations have been negatively impacted by Circle, Lawyer, Forensics firm, & Judge

Rain[.]gg
0x87d18ee84e8f4f5709cbf3500179a4c601da12ce
Clash[.]gg
0x9e2a58d257963a276452fff1be94c0eb7e2775cc
Whale[.]io
0x4bd282c083d9ec35aa6c3e0f366d79f12f3a1630
Goated[.]com
0x61f08d119974a3d9915f06765d83fe1aa677e543
500 Casino
0x68416debc20d13e5ef694cdcac9506f4c1a20184
Pepperstone
0x258494a21d9ea90fcbcb9e22bd57c6899de0d995
FXPro
0x5f9acf4e85aa7283e0c16dd94cbc942f9d625151
AMarkets
0x22face80f43b857141e9752c3bae8c3309fcdd0f
Herofx
0x2704ba2d5d3544e6292d9aca536b6bbbfebd80e9
Unknown service hot wallets
0xfb3a175ce3cb33d9f464a3c5ea0b834dae2aaaf6
0xb25ea1d493b49a1ded42ac5b1208cc618f9a9b80
0x090aac31fca0d19f91e30e02ec8217098a3a4446
0xbfca3e2097baa1eb354e9d915180707dde1027f2
0x3b848ac300b9e0d260e812b628b87a03d278db95
0x00e84a0b678cd4584a9a377d334c810025970873
0xf9e83020cccbd1a95f0f257a5a9e3d58149762f8

Source: https://t.me/investigations/304

It caught my attention because Whale.io is mentioned along other casinos and we know them because of all the support and activity they have in this forum.

This shows that USDC can not be trusted because they can freeze wallets without giving enough reasons and this can impact the situation of many services or people.

What do you think about this?

circle’s freezes show centralized stablecoins compliance risk; businesses suffer operationally, and trust in USDC likely weakens further.

[Zwei]

What needs to be clear is whether it was ordered by a judge, was preemptive, or was anything else.

according to this tweet from SWAPD, it was a court order from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York: https://x.com/SWAPD_com/status/2037084353218408810

As something happened to your business, and your USDC was stolen or something. They can freeze it and give it back to you. It's on a case-by-case basis, IMO.

i think they can only freeze the USDC, not give the coins back.

the biggest problem i see with freezing coins, is what if the USDC ends up on someone address who is unaware of it being stolen? or the hacker sends the coins on purpose to grief someone and get all their coins frozen?
if i'm a small business and someone does that to me, and i depend on those coins to pay employees and to keep my business running, if a court case takes months or years to end, i would already have gone bankrupt by the time.