Tether Freezes $514M in USDT as Compliance Push Accelerates

Tether's compliance push is gathering speed as it freezes over $514 million in USDT across two major blockchains, according to on-chain data. The figure comes from BlockSec's USDT Freeze Tracker, which counted 370 blacklisted addresses during the past 30 days.

Tron dominated the freezes, accounting for roughly $505.9 million, while Ethereum held only about $8.73 million. This reflects Tron's growing importance as a hub for high-volume USDT transfers, particularly in emerging markets where low fees drive adoption.

Analysts note that Tether is on track to surpass last year's totals well before December, with the issuer blacklisting 4,163 unique addresses across both chains and freezing $1.26 billion in USDT. More than half of those funds were later destroyed, and only 3.6% of flagged addresses were ever removed from the blacklist.

A separate study estimated Tether immobilized roughly $3.3 billion across 7,268 addresses over three years, far ahead of rival Circle. The recent freeze activity has been tied to the DSJ Exchange and BG Wealth Sharing collapse, an alleged Ponzi scheme that took more than $150 million from users.