Tether froze more than $514 million in USDT across 370 addresses on Ethereum and Tron over the past 30 days, the latest escalation in the company's campaign against illicit stablecoin use. Of those wallets, 328 were on Tron — accounting for about $506 million — while 42 on Ethereum held $8.73 million. The sweep comes as Tether faces growing scrutiny over its power to freeze tokens on decentralized networks.
The Tron-Ethereum split
Nearly all of the action happened on Tron. The network's lower fees and faster settlement have made it the go-to chain for USDT transactions, and that popularity extends to bad actors. Tether's blocklist now includes 328 Tron addresses from this month's batch alone, carrying roughly $506 million. Ethereum's 42 addresses held less than $9 million combined — a fraction of the total, but still notable given the chain's reputation for institutional traffic.
How it compares to 2025
In all of 2025, Tether blacklisted 4,163 addresses and froze $1.26 billion. The past 30 days represent about 40% of that yearly freeze volume in a single month. Only 3.6% of addresses blacklisted last year were later removed from the blocklist, suggesting the vast majority of those funds are gone for good. More than half of the money tied to blacklisted wallets was permanently destroyed using Tether's 'destroyBlackFunds' function — meaning it can never be recovered.
Coordinated with Washington
Two recent actions show Tether is working closely with U.S. authorities. In April 2026, the company coordinated with the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control to freeze over $344 million in USDT across two Tron wallets linked to suspected sanctions evasion involving Iran. In February, it helped seize more than $61 million connected to pig butchering scams — a type of investment fraud that has hit crypto users hard.
Tether previously disclosed it had frozen around $4.2 billion over three years due to links with illicit activity, with $3.5 billion locked since 2023. Cumulative from 2023 through 2025, the company froze roughly $3.3 billion across 7,268 addresses.
The decentralization question
The surge in blacklisting has reopened a debate that runs through much of crypto: how much control should a stablecoin issuer have? Tether's USDT contracts on both Ethereum and Tron are upgradeable, meaning the company can change the logic at any time — including freezing any address. For believers in permissionless finance, that's a feature that cuts against the ethos. For regulators, it's a selling point. The tension isn't going away, and neither is Tether's freeze list.
The next set of blacklist data — and the next coordinated action with OFAC — will tell us whether this pace is the new normal or just a heavy month.
