Central issuers drew a line after the Binance hack, but the hacker had already crossed into ETH, and that crossing is where the freeze story meets its limit.

Tether froze about $1.567B in USDT and Circle froze about $823M in USDC, actions only possible because each token has a central issuer able to block tokens at an address. Elliptic estimates the total frozen at about $2.84B, while Binance says about $3B was frozen.

The authority behind those freezes does not extend to ETH or Bitcoin. Neither asset has a central issuer with the same power, so holdings in those assets cannot be frozen by a company decision in the same manner.

Before the freezes landed, about $786M in stablecoins was converted into ETH and TRX. The conversion did not just move funds; it moved them into a category where issuer freezes no longer applied.

Per LlamaRisk, the Aave trail shows a similar pattern: about $59.9M in stolen USDT was deposited as collateral, and about $43.8M worth of ETH was borrowed against it, extracting ETH value from stablecoin collateral.

The result is a response that was both forceful and partial. Elliptic estimates the attacker still controls about $3.33B in assets that cannot be frozen by a centralised token issuer.

The overall hack is about $6.3B, so the unfrozen share is not a footnote. It is a reminder that centralised control can contain tokens, while a decentralised ecosystem also contains assets that no issuer can switch off.