Tether freezes $182 million in USDT from five Tron wallets

Beincrypto reports that Tether froze more than $182 million in USDT in a single day, targeting five Tron-based wallets during the last 24 hours. On January 11 the blockchain tracking service Whale Alert flagged five distinct freezing actions, with the targeted wallets holding sums ranging from $12 million to $50 million and effectively wiping $182 million in value off the active ledger.

The specific triggers for the seizures remain undisclosed, though the scale and speed of the intervention point to high-level coordination with law enforcement agencies or a response to a critical security exploit. Tether retains the "admin keys" that allow it to freeze funds at the smart-contract level and frequently exercises that authority to comply with requests from the US Department of Justice, the FBI and the Secret Service.

Chainalysis data cited in the report shows stablecoins accounted for 84% of illicit transaction volume by the end of 2025, and AMLBot said Tether froze about $3.3 billion between 2023 and 2025 and blacklisted 7,268 unique wallet addresses, with enforcement concentrated on Ethereum and Tron.

Key Topics

Crypto, Tether, Usdt, Tron, Whale Alert, Chainalysis