Key Highlights
- Tether froze $182M in USDT across five Tron wallets, showing stablecoins’ centralization and swift enforcement power.
- Stablecoins made up 84% of illicit crypto flows in 2025, yet illegal activity remains under 1% of total transactions.
- Just a week before, Tether minted 1B USDT on Tron and partnered with UNODC to boost digital security and fight fraud in Africa.
Tether, the company behind USDT stablecoin, has frozen over $182 million in USDT across five Tron-based wallets in the past 24 hours. The wallet amounts ranged from $12 million to $50 million, though the triggers behind the freezes remain undisclosed.
On January 11, blockchain tracking service Whale Alert recorded five individual freezing actions carried out by Tether. In these, the stablecoin issuer froze accounts on the Tron network only, thus giving evidence of its direct involvement in the action.
This is an addition to the freezes coincided with Tether blacklisting thousands of wallet addresses on Ethereum and Tron, that a report by AMLBot confirmed. These two blockchains host the deepest liquidity for USDT and hence make any enforcement quick and effective.
Despite these interventions, Tether maintains dominance in the stablecoin sector. USDT’s market capitalization sits near $187 billion, accounting for roughly 60% of the $308 billion stablecoin market, according to DeFiLlama.
Stablecoins and illicit activity
AMLBot further reported that Tether froze close to $3.3 billion in assets from 2023 to 2025 and blacklisted 7,268 wallet addresses around the world. The report had the TRON network accounting for $1.75 billion of frozen USDT.
In comparison, Circle’s USDC is more conservative, having frozen a total of just $109 million across 372 addresses, and then only when legally mandated to do so. In contrast, Tether has taken proactive steps, thereby illustrating further the different approaches these stablecoins take in their management.
According to a recent Chainalysis report, stablecoins made up 84% of all illegal crypto transactions by the end of 2025. Last year, suspicious addresses received at least $154 billion, a 162% jump from the year before, mostly linked to sanctioned entities. Even so, illegal activity still accounts for less than 1% of all crypto transactions.
This shows that even though stablecoins make up most illegal crypto activity, the majority of transactions are still legitimate. Tether’s freezing tools have helped return millions to victims and assisted authorities in tracking funds linked to terrorism, fraud, and human trafficking.
Tether, USDT and, decentralization
The latest freeze marks one of Tether’s largest single-day enforcement actions to date. Coordinated in response to U.S. law enforcement requests and likely tied to illicit activities, the move once again demonstrates Tether’s ability to blacklist addresses at the smart contract level. The action makes rendering funds inaccessible regardless of the underlying blockchain.
This capability, while effective for combating scams, fraud, and sanctions evasion, starkly contrasts with the core ethos of cryptocurrency: permissionless, and censorship-resistant money.
This incident reignites longstanding debates about decentralization in the stablecoin space. Unlike truly decentralized assets like Bitcoin, where no single entity holds freeze privileges, USDT remains under centralized control by Tether Ltd. While this model provides regulatory legitimacy and has helped recover funds for victims, it also means users must trust a private company and by extension, governments that can influence it, and not to arbitrarily restrict access.
For many in the crypto community, events like this serve as a clear reminder: stablecoins offer speed and dollar stability, but they come with an implicit “kill switch.” This undermines the sovereignty and censorship resistance that blockchain technology originally promised.
New USDT mint and strategic partnerships
Despite the freezing, Tether recently minted 1 billion USDT on Tron last Saturday, marking its first major issuance of 2026. Blockchain tracking platform Onchain Lens observed the transfer from Tether’s multi-signature wallet to its treasury address.
Apart from minting, Tether is making progress in other areas. Tether recently announced a partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to strengthen digital asset security in Africa.
Under this initiative, education programs would cover Senegal, with funding for civil society organizations going toward Nigeria, Malawi, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while university projects would start in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The collaboration aims to deter fraud, safeguard digital assets, and support victims of human trafficking.
Also Read: Coinbase May Pull Support as CLARITY Act Targets Stablecoin Rewards
