The largest single freeze yet in the Binance hack response came from Tether, which locked about $1.567 billion worth of USDT.

Freezing works for USDT because a central issuer stands behind the token and can render holdings at flagged addresses unusable, a lever that does not exist for every crypto asset.

That distinction became clear as funds moved before the block: the hacker had already swapped about $786 million in stablecoins for ETH and TRX.

Another trail led to Aave, where LlamaRisk says about $59.9 million in stolen USDT was posted as collateral and about $43.8 million worth of ETH was borrowed against it.

Across issuers, Elliptic estimates about $2.84 billion in total frozen funds, a figure Binance places at about $3 billion, against an overall hack estimated at about $6.3 billion.

What remains outside issuer control is the larger story, with Elliptic estimating that about $3.33 billion in assets still sits with the attacker and cannot be frozen by a centralised token issuer.

USDT and USDC answer to issuers that can freeze them, while ETH and Bitcoin answer to no central issuer with that same power, which is why a freeze this large, while significant, does not by itself resolve the theft.