A major issuer of the stablecoin Tether froze a new batch
USDT
point down
$1.00
More than $8 million worth of cryptocurrency has been frozen on the Ethereum blockchain.
Crypto monitoring resource Whale Alert has identified several transactions indicating that Tether froze three USDT addresses on October 10th.
According to Etherscan transaction logs, the frozen addresses contain 3.4M USDT, 1.95M USDT, and 2.9M USDT. The addresses can no longer transfer funds and have a total stablecoin of $8.2 million.
Source: Twitter
A Tether spokesperson told Cointelegraph: “Tether is working closely with law enforcement around the world to assist with investigations, including the freeze.” The company declined to comment on the nature of the new freeze, saying, “Tether is unable to comment on any cooperation with law enforcement as part of its global compliance program.”
The latest freeze is not the first time Tether has blacklisted Ethereum-based USDT addresses. As previously reported, in January 2022, Tether froze three Ethereum addresses containing over $150 million in Ethereum.
Tether has been actively cooperating with regulators and has blacklisted a total of 795 USDT addresses on Ethereum since it first blacklisted a USDT address in November 2017.
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Tether added 215 Ethereum-based USDT addresses to its blacklist in 2022, according to Dune Analytics dashboard data compiled by Ethereum researcher Philip Castonguet. In comparison, Tether blacklisted 357 Ethereum-based USDT addresses in 2021.
Source: Dune Analytics.
According to data from CoinGecko, the total value of Ethereum-based USDT across all locked wallets is over 443 million, or 0.64% of the $65 billion in circulation at the time of writing.
