Tether Freezes Over $180 Million as Stablecoins Dominate Illicit Crypto Flows
Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, froze greater than $180 million price of USDT during the last 24 hours.
On January 11, the blockchain monitoring service Whale Alert flagged a collection of 5 distinct freezing actions executed by Tether.
Why Did Tether Freeze Millions in USDT Without Warning?
The operations focused Tron-based wallets holding sums starting from $12 million to $50 million, successfully wiping $182 million in worth off the energetic ledger in a single day.
While the particular triggers for the seizures stay undisclosed, the size and pace of the intervention level to high-level coordination with regulation enforcement businesses or a response to a vital safety exploit.
The transfer highlights a paradox on the coronary heart of the digital asset economic system: whereas cryptocurrencies have been designed to be censorship-resistant, the stablecoins that energy 60% of the market are extremely centralized.
Tether maintains the “admin keys” required to immediately freeze funds on the good contract degree. It frequently exercises this authority to adjust to requests from the US Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Secret Service.
This aggressive compliance posture has change into obligatory as prison networks more and more pivot toward dollar-pegged tokens.
According to Chainalysis information, illicit finance actions have shifted dramatically. While Bitcoin was as soon as the forex of alternative for darknet markets, stablecoins represented 84% of all illicit transaction volume by the tip of 2025.
Forensic information from AMLBot reinforces this pattern. In a report launched final December, the agency famous that Tether froze roughly $3.3 billion in property between 2023 and 2025.
These enforcement actions have been concentrated throughout the Ethereum (ERC-20) and Tron (TRC-20) networks, the place Tether’s liquidity is deepest. During that very same interval, the issuer blacklisted 7,268 unique wallet addresses.
Despite the friction of those freezes, Tether’s market dominance stays unchallenged.
The token (USDT) at present has a market capitalization of practically $187 billion, accounting for roughly 60% of the $308 billion stablecoin sector, in accordance with DeFiLlama information.
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