Tether launches wallet freezing policy, freezes 161 wallets related to SDN on the first day

Tether announced yesterday that it will block wallets subject to U.S. sanctions from using its stablecoin USDT. The new sanctions affected 161 Ethereum wallets, out of which 150 did not hold any USDT at all. Among the remaining 11 wallets, one wallet held 97% of the 3.5 million USDT, and another wallet transferred hundreds of thousands of tokens the day before the freeze.

Tether Initiates Voluntary Wallet Freezing to Prevent USDT Abuse

The stablecoin issuer Tether announced a new policy to enhance ecosystem security on 12/9. Tether has launched a new "voluntary wallet freezing policy" to freeze tokens in wallets belonging to individuals on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list, in order to collaborate more closely with global regulatory and law enforcement agencies, and "proactively prevent any potential abuse of Tether tokens and strengthen security measures."

161 Wallets Frozen, Holding 3.5 Million USDT

According to The Block's report, Tether did freeze 161 Ethereum wallets yesterday, but 150 of them did not hold USDT. The remaining 11 wallets held over 3.5 million USDT, with 3.4 million tokens held by a single address. Blockchain detective ZachXBT linked this address to a recent hack on the gambling platform Stake, which was active shortly before the freezing was implemented and had conducted hundreds of transactions in the past week.

Among the wallets holding USDT, two addresses held approximately 20,000 tokens each, while a third address held nearly 60,000 tokens. The rest held smaller amounts; one wallet had only 16 cents' worth of USDT. However, the day before the freezing, this wallet was used to transfer over 400,000 USDT received from THORChain to another two wallets, neither of which seemed to have been frozen by Tether.