Opinion by Lissele Pratt, co-founder of Capitalixe.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said last weekend that North Korea was behind the $6.3 billion hack of Binance — a theft that analysts are calling the largest heist on record. Much of the coverage since has focused on the scale of the breach. Far less has been said about what went right, and that part of the story carries a lesson regulators cannot afford to ignore.

The perpetrators did steal $6.3 billion, but they have not managed to hold on to a significant share of it. Roughly $2.85 billion of the stolen funds has been frozen, according to on-chain analytics firm Elliptic.

The reason comes down to what the stolen money was made of: 94% of the $2.85 billion frozen was held in stablecoins — tokens designed to track the value of a traditional currency, the US dollar in this case, and used throughout crypto markets for trading and payments.

The hack was terrible news for the industry, but it demonstrated that the centralized control so often criticized by crypto purists may be one of the strongest tools available against crypto crime. Unlike most other assets, stablecoins can be frozen by their issuers, which can blacklist the wallets holding them and leave the tokens unable to move, giving victims a real chance to stop stolen money from reaching the wrong hands.

It also raises an uncomfortable question: if private companies hold the power to freeze billions of dollars in assets, who decides when they should be allowed to use it? The United Kingdom now has an opportunity to answer that question on a formal footing.

Hackers raced to offload stablecoins

How much the freeze mattered is clearest from what the hackers did within the first hour of the heist. They plainly understood there was a very limited window to move the stablecoins before anyone could stop them, and they acted on it immediately.

Less than an hour after the hack began, they had already sold $325 million worth of stolen USDT (Tether's stablecoin) for Ether. The logic was straightforward: swap an asset that could be frozen for one that could not. Unlike a stablecoin, Ether has no issuing company that can blacklist wallets.

Issuers moved quickly to blunt the effort. Tether's first major freeze came just 37 minutes after the stolen funds reached the hackers' main wallet, and Circle followed three minutes later, blocking movement of its USDC stablecoin. Without Tether and Circle intervening, far more of the funds could have ended up beyond their reach.

Rules for freezing have yet to be agreed

The freeze worked, for the most part, because a handful of companies decided in real time to use it. The problem is that no agreed standard exists outlining when a freeze is justified or how quickly a response needs to come — and the consequences of those unanswered questions are beginning to surface.

Circle, for instance, is facing a proposed class action from Drift Protocol investors who allege the company failed to freeze around $230 million in stolen USDC after the April hack. Their argument is that Circle could have stopped the money from moving but did not act in time.

Meanwhile, Tether is being sued in New York by two businessmen who claim it froze millions of dollars of their assets months before a seizure warrant existed. Tether has responded to the case, calling those allegations baseless.

In payments and banking, it is common to see traditional banks freeze funds and accounts, which might suggest stablecoin issuers should simply have the same ability. They should — but banks do not get to freeze assets out of nowhere. There is normally a legal trigger behind the decision, as well as a way to challenge it. Stablecoin issuers now hold comparable power while having to act faster and across borders, so it is about time they were given some structure. A freeze timeline of the incident compiled by blockchain security firm CertiK traces how quickly those decisions had to be made.

Britain's opening to act

There is a caveat when it comes to regulating stablecoin issuers: Tether and Circle, two of the largest, are not based in the UK, so British regulators cannot simply tell them what to do.

What Britain can control, however, is which stablecoins UK customers are allowed to buy — and work on that front is already underway. In June, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published its cryptoassets regime, under which UK trading platforms must carry out due diligence and publish a disclosure document before listing a coin, a requirement that extends to stablecoins issued overseas. The regime comes into force on 25 October 2027.

The Bank of England, for its part, is finalizing its Code of Practice for systemic stablecoin issuers by the end of 2026. It covers stablecoins used widely enough for payments to matter to UK financial stability.

Neither framework establishes the clear obligations around freezing stolen funds that I believe are necessary. But both are still taking shape, giving the UK a genuine opportunity to address that gap now rather than trying to retrofit new requirements later.

Two conditions for a UK listing

Here is a solution that I believe would work: before a stablecoin can be sold on a UK platform, its issuer should have to agree to two conditions.

The first is that the issuer remains contactable and ready to act. Tether and Circle did exactly that last week, but the victim was the world's biggest exchange. A small UK platform should get the same response. I work with a number of smaller crypto businesses that do not have Binance's profile or a direct line to Tether, and under the current system they are the ones most likely to be left waiting.

The second is a clear timetable for what happens next. If an issuer freezes funds, it should notify the National Crime Agency, the UK's lead agency against serious and organised crime, the same day. The freeze should then expire if no court order has been put in place to keep the wallet frozen.

Neither condition is particularly controversial. Together, they would give law enforcement a chance to intervene when money is stolen, while protecting people from having their assets frozen indefinitely without legal grounds.

The Binance hack has shown that stablecoins can give victims of crypto crime a chance to stop stolen money before it is gone for good. That should not be a privilege reserved only for the world's biggest exchanges.

Opinion contributed by Lissele Pratt, co-founder of Capitalixe. Originally published by Cointelegraph on 9 November 2026: https://cointelegraph.com/opinion/285b-binance-hackers-lost-shows-why-uk-needs-stablecoin-freeze-rules