BroadChain, April 24, 13:46 - On April 23, Tether announced that it had frozen a total of over $344 million in USDT across two wallet addresses on the Tron blockchain, in coordination with the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and law enforcement agencies. This is the largest single compliance freeze in the stablecoin sector, nearly double the previous record of $182 million set in January. Blockchain security firm PeckShield first identified the two addresses, which held approximately $212.9 million and $131.3 million, respectively. Tether stated that the freeze was based on intelligence shared by U.S. authorities, involving sanctions evasion, criminal networks, or other illegal activities, but did not disclose specific investigation targets. Blockchain analysis platform AMLbot noted that these two addresses appeared in documents related to fraudulent schemes, with one linked to a fictitious $75 billion contract and the other involved in a Bitcoin-to-USDT scam promising an instant 10% return.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino emphasized that USDT is "not a haven for illegal activities," and the company takes immediate action upon discovering reliable links to sanctioned entities or criminal networks. He also implicitly criticized competitor Circle for its slow response in the Drift Protocol incident, stating that "when platforms fail to act swiftly, law enforcement fails, users are exposed, and trust collapses." Tether currently collaborates with over 340 law enforcement agencies across 65 countries, has assisted in handling more than 2,300 cases, and has frozen a cumulative total of over $4.4 billion in assets, of which $2.1 billion directly involves U.S. law enforcement. Previous large-scale freezes include approximately $225 million in November 2023 (linked to investigations into Southeast Asian human trafficking and "pig butchering" scams) and about $182 million in January 2026 (involving five Tron wallets).
According to The CC Press, this freeze was executed under OFAC's sanctions framework against Iran and holds significant policy timing. On the same day, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 23 individuals and entities linked to the Sinaloa Cartel, which, while not directly related to Tether's freeze, points to the same strategic direction: the U.S. government is intensifying enforcement against cryptocurrency sanctions evasion. Regarding Iran, the scale of USDT used for sanctions evasion has surged in recent years. The Block, citing a TRM Labs investigation, reported that two UK-registered exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, served as financial conduits for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), processing approximately $1 billion in transactions between 2023 and 2025, of which 56% were IRGC-related, almost all settled via USDT on the Tron blockchain. IRGC-related transaction volumes skyrocketed from $24 million in 2023 to $619 million in 2024. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal publicly labeled Tether a "key money laundering tool" for the IRGC, sanctioned Iranian banks, and Iranian weapons manufacturers. In March, Tether also froze $6.76 million in USDT linked to networks associated with the IRGC and the Houthi rebels.
However, the specific attribution of this $344 million freeze remains controversial. Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik posted on-chain analysis on X platform, stating that the network linked to the frozen addresses has been operating since 2021, with fund flows to Turkish exchange Paribu, but transactions with known IRGC wallets amount to only about $1.5 million, or 0.4% of the total frozen amount. He assessed that attributing all the funds to the IRGC has low credibility. This freeze has once again sparked community discussions about the "one-click freeze" power of stablecoin issuers. Tether has frozen over $4.4 billion in assets to date, but its circulating supply of approximately $189 billion has never undergone a full audit.