ZachXBT has accused Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, of profiting from transactions linked to the North Korean hacker group Lazarus. Lazarus is alleged to have laundered $200 million through stablecoins between 2020 and 2023.

According to ZachXBT, four major stablecoin issuers — Paxos, Tether, Techteryx, and Circle — have already blacklisted two cryptocurrency addresses linked to Lazarus, which held $4.96 million in various stablecoins, including USDT, BUSD, TUSD, and USDC. Another $1.65 million has been frozen on various exchanges, bringing the total amount of funds frozen to $6.98 million.

However, it took Circle much longer than other stablecoin issuers to blacklist the addresses associated with Lazarus. The company blacklisted the addresses on September 14 of this year, nearly five months after other issuers did so. The blockchain sleuth believes that the delay allowed Circle to profit from the transactions of hackers involved in major cryptocurrency thefts.

ZachXBT accused Circle of systemically failing to respond quickly to exploits and hacks of DeFi projects. Despite its large staff, the company does not have a team of employees to deal with problems arising from hacker attacks, the blockchain sleuth noted.

Earlier this month, over $15.7 million worth of crypto assets were stolen from Indonesian crypto exchange Indodax. The incident forced the platform to suspend operations. Lazarus hackers are suspected of being behind the attack.