You’ll Never Guess Why Tether Just Froze Another $12.3M on Tron

by

Oh, Tether. Just when you thought your crypto funds were safe for bottomless brunch, boom! $12.3 million in USDt has been locked up tighter than my diary after a disastrous Tinder date. And who’s behind the drama? None other than Tether, issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, clutching those purse strings on the Tron Network like a slightly paranoid mother at a children’s party. 🤑

According to the ever-so-trusty Tronscan (think Big Brother with less style), all that juicy USDT was frozen at precisely 9:15 am UTC, June 15. Because when it comes to spontaneous asset freezing, timing is apparently everything.

Why the cold shoulder, you ask? No statement, no cryptic tweets—just icy silence from Tether HQ. But anyone with half a brain cell could guess: it’s probably more mysterious OFAC list shenanigans or the ever-thrilling Anti-Money Laundering melodrama. Someone’s got to keep the bad guys from buying imaginary yachts, right?

Once upon a March 7 blog post (yes, we all read Tether’s blog, totally and unironically), our money-freezing heroes promised to “combat money laundering, nuclear proliferation and terrorist financing.” The usual post-apocalyptic bingo card, really. It’s all aligned with US Treasury rules, so you know it’s not just for drama.

CryptoMoon tried to poke Tether for a dramatic quote, but got ghosted. Classic.

OFAC slapped sanctions on Garantex in April 2022 for, um, skipping their compliance homework. And yet, as of June 5, Global Ledger says there’s still $15 million frolicking about in Garantex-linked reserves. Not quite a flawless freeze, but points for effort.

Let’s talk Lazarus, the international hackers with more PR baggage than the Kardashians. Some decentralization stans are rolling their eyes at Tether’s freeze-happy ways, but you can’t really argue when they’re blocking literal hundreds of millions from being laundered by crypto’s shadier folk. “The FCU”—not a badly written crime show, but actually the Tether, Tron, and TRM Labs task force—boasts $126 million in frozen funds over their first six months, like diet Avengers but for digital money.

Since 2009, Lazarus has stolen over $3 billion in crypto, which is technically more than my ASOS order history. Between 2020 and 2023, that North Korean crew allegedly washed $200 million in crypto, clearly not spending it on haircuts.

November 2023 saw Tether blacklist $374,000 more in Lazarus loot, and just to keep things spicy, three out of four stablecoin issuers zapped another $3.4 million across some classic Lazarus-linked addresses, according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT. If blockchain were a soap opera, this episode would end on a dramatic close-up.

Read More

2025-06-16 12:31