PANews reported on April 13 that Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated in South Korea that the company will not freeze USDC addresses involved in hacking and vulnerability incidents without law enforcement or court orders, calling unauthorized intervention in user assets a "significant ethical dilemma." Previously, the DeFi protocol Drift suffered an attack of approximately $ 280 million, with about $ 230 million in USDC transferred from Solana to Ethereum via Circle's cross-chain protocol, prompting criticism from on-chain analysts such as ZachXBT that Circle did not freeze the relevant funds. Allaire stated that Circle only executes freezes within the legal framework and is pushing for the US Clarity Act to provide "safe harbor" provisions for stablecoin issuers to preventatively freeze funds in extreme circumstances. Simultaneously, Circle signed a memorandum of understanding with Dunamu (the parent company of Upbit ) and Bithumb , two major South Korean exchanges, to promote the compliant expansion of USDC in the local market.