Tether (USDT), the corporate behind the world’s largest stablecoin, has frozen the wallets of people sanctioned by the U.S. Workplace of Overseas Asset Controls (OFAC).
In a current announcement, the corporate stated it goals to forestall potential misuse of its tokens and improve safety measures by aligning with international regulation enforcement and regulators.
“This strategic determination aligns with our unwavering dedication to sustaining the very best requirements of security for our international ecosystem and increasing our shut working relationship with international regulation enforcement and regulators” Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, stated.
“By executing voluntary pockets tackle freezing of recent additions to the SDN Listing and freezing beforehand added addresses, we can additional strengthen the optimistic utilization of stablecoin know-how and promote a safer stablecoin ecosystem for all customers.”
Whereas Tether has beforehand frozen funds related to illicit actions, the corporate had been hesitant to freeze wallets interacting with the sanctioned protocol, Twister Money.
Tether claimed that it had not acquired any requests from U.S. regulation enforcement to take action.
Nevertheless, following the current announcement, blockchain data point out that Tether has blacklisted Twister Money’s contract addresses.
Solely 11 of the Sanctioned Addresses Maintain USDT
In response to blockchain data, Tether froze a complete of 161 Ethereum wallets, though 150 of those wallets presently maintain no USDT tokens.
It stays unclear whether or not these wallets beforehand held USDT tokens or in the event that they had been ever concerned in any associated actions.
Among the many remaining 11 wallets, over 3.5 million USDT tokens are held, with the bulk concentrated in a single tackle holding 3.4 million tokens.
Notably, this tackle has been linked to a current hack of the betting platform Stake.
Of the wallets holding USDT tokens, two addresses include round 20,000 tokens every, whereas one other holds almost 60,000 tokens.
The remaining wallets maintain smaller quantities, with one pockets containing simply 16 cents price of frozen USDT.
Two days previous to the freeze, this explicit pockets was used to switch over 400,000 USDT acquired from THORChain via two different wallets, making it difficult to hint the funds.
Curiously, neither of the routing wallets used within the transaction has been frozen by Tether.
It’s price noting that the wallets could maintain USDT tokens on totally different chains, together with Ethereum Layer 2 networks.
A search on Polygonscan revealed two wallets with USDT tokens on Polygon, however the mixed whole was simply over 10,000 tokens, with one pockets additionally holding USDT on Ethereum’s mainnet.
An identical search on Arbitrum and Optimism didn’t yield any wallets with USDT balances among the many sanctioned checklist.
Tether’s Bitcoin Guess Begins to Pay Off
In Could 2023, Tether introduced its plans to allocate up to 15% of net realized profits into Bitcoin on an ongoing foundation.
By holding BTC and different property, Tether goals to guard its reserves from the lack of buying energy throughout extended cryptocurrency market downturns.
Courtesy of the current surge in costs, Tether’s Bitcoin holdings have gained round 85%, or $1.1 billion, since their acquisition.