Tether Holdings recently froze $13.4 million worth of USDT that was stored on 22 wallet addresses on the Ethereum and Tron networks, noted by MistTrack.
Summary
- Tether has frozen $13.4 million in USDT across 22 Ethereum and Tron addresses this month, continuing its pattern of blocking suspicious funds as part of law enforcement and compliance efforts.
- The freeze comes amid growing scrutiny of Tether’s methods, as Texas-based Riverstone Consulting has sued the firm for allegedly unlawfully freezing $44.7 million.
According to on-chain monitoring firm MistTrack, the stablecoin issuer has frozen 22 addresses across the Ethereum and Tron networks. However, it is unclear where these funds originated from and what was the underlying reason for the firm to freeze these addresses.
Based on the post, largest chunk of the funds were clumped into one address, which held $10.3 million worth of USDT (USDT). The address beginning with 0xecbd8 held the majority of the total $13.4 million on-chain funds. Another major address, starting with TYzDeb, held about 1.4 million USDT.
Throughout the past year, the stablecoin giant has executed a number of freeze operations on funds held on various addresses. More often than not, these funds were found on Tron (TRX) and Ethereum (ETH) network addresses.
In June 2025, Tether froze more than $12.3 million worth of funds stored on the Tron network. A similar operation occurred in April 2025, when the firm froze around 28.67 million USDT across 13 addresses.
One of the firm’s largest freeze operations took place in March of this year, when it froze $28 million in USDT on the Russian crypto exchange Garantex. However, even after the freeze, blockchain analytics firm Global Ledger found that the exchange still held $15 million in active reserves.
Although Tether has yet to issue an official statement clarifying the reason for freezing the 22 addresses, the company often cooperates with law enforcements and international bodies that may request certain addresses to be frozen as they are linked to sanctioned entities, terrorism financing, and fraud schemes
When agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, or the Office of Foreign Assets Control identify wallets linked to crimes like fraud, terrorism financing, or human trafficking, the firm may be asked to freeze those specific addresses to block further movement of the funds.
Additionally, the stablecoin issuer may also freeze funds in order to comply with global sanctions and anti-money-laundering obligations. It regularly monitors blockchain activity for links to sanctioned entities, darknet markets, and mixing services like Tornado Cash. If such connections are found, the company preemptively freezes those wallets to avoid breaching international financial laws
Tether sued for freezing funds
Not everyone agrees with Tether’s methods in halting the flow of funds on-chain when suspected violations or links to unlawful entities arise. Just a day prior, Texas-based Riverstone Consultancy filed a lawsuit against the stablecoin issuer.
The company accuses Tether of unlawfully freezing $44.7 million in USDT, which allegedly caused Riverstone to miss significant investment opportunities. The alleged case stems from an incident in April 2025, when Tether froze funds held in eight wallets belonging to Riverstone at the request of Bulgarian police.
The company argues that Tether’s act bypassed the official steps required under the Bulgarian International Judicial Assistance Treaty, which specifies that all information exchanges should go through designated central authorities and diplomatic channels.
Riverstone claimed that when they reached out to Tether, the firm told them to contact Bulgarian officials directly, but those authorities allegedly failed to provide any response.
According to its Sep. 15 press release, Tether claimed it has frozen more than $3.2 billion worth of USDT linked to criminal activity, in collaboration with more than 290 law enforcement agencies across 59 countries. Within the past year, the firm has blocked as many as 3,660 wallets.
