Overview
- On Jan. 11, Tether locked roughly $182 million in USDT across five Tron wallets, according to on-chain tracker Whale Alert.
- Reporting indicates the action was taken in coordination with U.S. authorities including the DOJ and FBI, while Tether has not disclosed case-specific details.
- The tokens were immobilized at the smart-contract level using administrative keys that enable issuer-led freezes.
- Analytics firm AMLBot reports Tether froze more than $3 billion from over 7,000 addresses between 2023 and 2025, placing the latest move among the largest single-day actions.
- Tron hosts over $80 billion in USDT, and Chainalysis estimates stablecoins accounted for about 84% of illicit crypto activity by late 2025, intensifying debate over centralized controls.