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Hassan Shittu
Journalist
Hassan Shittu
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A New York bankruptcy court has granted interim relief to Singapore-based liquidators overseeing the collapse of Multichain Foundation Ltd., directing stablecoin issuer Circle to keep wallets containing millions of dollars in stolen USD Coin (USDC) frozen.
Judge David S. Jones of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York issued order on Thursday, extending the freeze on three Ethereum wallets linked to the July 2023 Multichain Hack.
The ruling requires Circle to keep the addresses on its blacklist, effectively blocking any movement of the roughly $63 million in stolen USDC until further notice.
The court’s decision marks a major step in the cross-border effort to recover assets drained by Multichain’s cross-chain bridge protocol, which lost more than $210 million in one of the biggest DeFi exploits of 2023.
Inside the Multichain case: How liquidators win by freezing USDC
The order, issued below Section 1519 of the US Bankruptcy Code, allows for temporary relief before a foreign case receives formal recognition under Chapter 15, the framework that regulates cooperation between US courts and foreign insolvency proceedings.
Liquidators appointed in Singapore, by KPMG Services Pte. Ltd., filed for interim relief on October 23, arguing that lifting Circle’s freeze could cause “immediate and irreparable harm” by allowing the stolen goods to go beyond recovery.
The request sought to preserve the funds until the US court determines whether to recognize the Singapore case as a “foreign main proceeding,” a designation that allows liquidators to pursue recovery efforts in all jurisdictions.
Circle, which issues the US dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC, typically enforces freezes from blacklisted addresses directly through the token’s smart contract, a feature that blocks any transfers involving those wallets.
The company it first froze the three addresses linked to the hacks in October 2023 at the direction of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), which obtained a seizure warrant shortly after the exploitation.
The DOJ later lifted the warrant after failing to identify the hackers, leaving Circle without a legal basis to keep the wallets closed. The latest order will restore that authority.
According to the court filing, the freeze is necessary to prevent competing claims on the same funds. A group of American investors had filed a separate class action lawsuit against Circle in New York State court, seeking control of the stolen USDC.
That case has now been on hiatus after the federal court decision. Circle moved the case to the Southern District of New York under the Class Action Fairness Act, which allows large multi-jurisdictional class actions to be heard in federal court.
After the $125M Hack, Multichain Makes Its Final Chapter in Court
The collapse of Multichain, one of the highest failures in the decentralized financial sector, derives from an exploit discovered in July 2023.
Unidentified attackers drained more than $125 million from Multichain’s bridge contracts on Fantom, Moonriver, and Dogechain by transferring funds to unknown addresses.
Multichain, formerly known as Anyswap, operated as one of the largest cross-chain bridge protocols, allowing users to move assets across blockchains such as Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche and Polygon.
The platform had a total closed value of about $9.2 billion in early 2022, according to to data from DeFiLlama, before its problems begin in the middle of 2023.
Reports later emerged that the company’s CEO, known as Zhaojun, he had been arrested in Chinaleaving the project in disarray.
After the hack, the affected projects, including the Fantom Foundation, launched legal actions in Singapore. In March 2024, the High Court of Singapore issued a default judgment in favor of Fantomfinding that Multichain had breached contractual obligations.
From May 2025, the same court approved a liquidation order against Multichain Foundation Ltd.appointing Bob Yap Cheng Ghee of KPMG, Toh Ai Ling and Tan Yen Chiaw as joint liquidators to oversee the recovery and dissolution of the assets.
The $63 million frozen in USDC represents a portion of the total $210 million stolen from Multichain. The liquidators are seeking to recover these assets as part of the wider liquidation process.
In their US presentation, they described the New York court’s temporary relief as “an effective mechanism to implement Chapter 15 policies to promote cooperation between US courts and foreign courts involved in cross-border restructuring cases.”
