Tether freezes $344M USDT linked to Iran

Tether said it froze $344.2 million in USDT on the Tron blockchain after U.S. authorities flagged two wallets in an Iran-linked sanctions case. (coindesk.com) (decrypt.co) The company said the freeze covered two Tron addresses and was carried out with the Office of Foreign Assets Control and U.S. law enforcement. (decrypt.co) (coindesk.com) Blockchain monitors said one wallet held about $212.9 million in USDT and the other about $131.3 million when Tether blacklisted them on April 23. (binance.com) (bsc.news) The case centers on USDT, a dollar-pegged token issued by a private company that can block transfers at the issuer level even though the balances sit on a public blockchain. (tether.to 1) (tether.to 2) That structure makes USDT useful for fast cross-border trading, but it also means sanctions enforcement can reach on-chain balances without shutting down the underlying network. (tether.to) (ofac.treasury.gov) TRM Labs said the two wallets were designated as property of the Central Bank of Iran, with links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and Hizballah. (trmlabs.com) TRM said the wallets received roughly $370 million across about 1,000 transactions since March 2021 and then sat largely dormant after late 2023. (trmlabs.com) The freeze landed during a broader April 2026 Treasury campaign branded “Economic Fury,” which added new Iran-related sanctions actions on April 21 and April 24. (home.treasury.gov) (ofac.treasury.gov) Tether has long argued that this kind of control is part of its compliance model, and its terms say it can freeze tokens when law or its own risk judgment requires it. (tether.to) The episode leaves two facts on the table at once: the dollars stayed visible on-chain, and the issuer made them unusable with a blacklist update. (coindesk.com) (tether.to)