Tether suspends 13.4 million USDT across 22 accounts.

Tether Holdings has recently immobilized $13.4 million in USDT across 22 wallet addresses on the Ethereum and Tron networks, as reported by MistTrack.

According to the on-chain tracking firm MistTrack, the stablecoin issuer has frozen 22 addresses across the Ethereum and Tron networks. However, the origins of these funds remain unclear, along with the reasons behind the firm’s freeze on these addresses.

According to a post, a significant portion of the funds was concentrated in one address, holding $10.3 million in USDT. The address, which starts with 0xecbd8, contained the bulk of the total $13.4 million in on-chain assets. A separate notable address, starting with TYzDeb, contained approximately 1.4 million USDT.

Throughout the past year, the stablecoin leader has conducted several freeze operations on various addresses. These funds were predominantly located on addresses within Tron (TRX) and Ethereum (ETH) networks.

In June 2025, Tether froze over $12.3 million in assets held on the Tron network. A similar freeze occurred in April 2025, when the company immobilized around 28.67 million USDT across 13 addresses.

One of the firm’s largest freeze procedures occurred in March of this year, when it immobilized $28 million in USDT on the Russian crypto exchange Garantex. Nevertheless, even after the freeze, blockchain analytics firm Global Ledger discovered that the exchange still retained $15 million in active reserves.

While Tether has not made an official statement explaining the reason for freezing the 22 addresses, the company often collaborates with law enforcement and international organizations that may request specific addresses to be frozen due to links to sanctioned entities, terrorism financing, and fraudulent schemes.

When agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, or the Office of Foreign Assets Control identify wallets associated with crimes such as fraud, terrorism financing, or human trafficking, they may request Tether to freeze those addresses to prevent further movement of the funds.

Furthermore, the stablecoin issuer may also choose to freeze assets to comply with global sanctions and anti-money laundering requirements. It consistently monitors blockchain transactions for links to sanctioned groups, dark web markets, and mixing services such as Tornado Cash. If any such connections are identified, the company proactively freezes those wallets to prevent violations of international financial regulations.

Tether sued for freezing funds

Not everyone approves of Tether’s approach to halting transactions when suspected violations or connections to unlawful entities emerge. Just a day prior, Texas-based Riverstone Consultancy filed a lawsuit against the stablecoin issuer.

The firm alleges that Tether unlawfully froze $44.7 million in USDT, which reportedly caused Riverstone to forgo substantial investment opportunities. The issue arose from an incident in April 2025, when Tether froze funds in eight wallets belonging to Riverstone at the request of Bulgarian authorities.

Riverstone contends that Tether’s actions bypassed required official procedures under the Bulgarian International Judicial Assistance Treaty, which mandates that all informational exchanges should go through designated central authorities and diplomatic channels.

Riverstone stated that when they reached out to Tether, the firm advised them to engage directly with Bulgarian officials, but those officials allegedly did not respond.

According to its Sep. 15 press release, Tether claimed to have frozen over $3.2 billion in USDT linked to criminal activity, collaborating with over 290 law enforcement agencies across 59 countries. In the past year, the firm has blocked approximately 3,660 wallets.