Tether Holdings, the USDT stablecoin issuer, has frozen two addresses on the Ethereum network that received funds from Multichain’s Multiparty Account (MPC) address.
The two addresses, which are currently flagged by Ethereum’s block explorer, Etherscan as “suspicious Multichain addresses”, together allegedly contain around $2.53 million USD.
The action by the stablecoin issuer comes after it was reported that a large amount of multi-currency assets valued at around $130 million were reported to have flown from the Multichain Protocol across the chain under suspicious circumstances on July 7.
Multichain Fantom (FTM) Bridge saw an outflow of $122 million in assets in the incident. In contrast, the Moonriver Bridge lost nearly $7 million. Another $600,000 has been withdrawn from a Multichain address connected to Dogecoin.
The official Multichain Twitter account issued a statement acknowledging the abnormal movement of holding assets from its MPC address to an unknown destination.
Multichain also advised its users to immediately stop using the protocol’s services and revoke any approvals on contracts associated with it, emphasizing the importance of taking precautionary measures. The cross-chain platform then suspended services indefinitely, leaving many users in limbo.
The Circle Freezes Millions Related to the Multichain Theft
Tether’s move to freeze the two addresses linked to the suspected Multichain breach follows the example of a fellow stablecoin issuer, which took action against three wallet addresses previously implicated in the same incident.
According to Etherscan data Collected on July 7, the circuit, which issues currency in US dollars (USDC), blocked three transactions totaling $27.65 million, $30.1 million, and $5.5 million, preventing the suspected exploiter from withdrawing a fair portion of the money he had stolen.
(embed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqi4qxmFVJU (/embed)
Tether and Circle have a history of interfering with hacking incidents to prevent bad actors from disbursing stolen funds. Currently, USDT and USDC frozen by the two companies cannot be transferred. However, it is still uncertain whether Tether and Circle will transfer funds to Multichain.
Disturbingly, the exact nature of the Multichain breach and the identities behind these suspicious transactions are still unknown, adding to the intrigue surrounding the incident.