Tether blocks 161 addresses on OFAC SDN list

The issuer stablecoin USDT — the company Tether —blocked 161 addresses from SDN-list OFAC. Of them, 150 were empty.

One held 3.5 million USDT — analyst ZachXBT linked it to the Stake platform hack.

Wallet for an OTC or service that just received bunch of funds from Stake hack https://t.co/vYQ5ZDqGsM

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) December 9, 2023

Another — with a balance of 16 cents — moved the $400,000 obtained from THORChain into stablecoins on the day before the block. A few more wallets held between $20,000 and $60,000.

The move aligns with the company’s policy change, which envisages freezing all OFAC-sanctioned addresses.

The new provisions are aimed at “protecting the cryptocurrency ecosystem and creating a safe and reliable user environment worldwide.”

At The Block suggested, that the wallets hold USDT across different chains, including L2-Ethereum networks. Experts found two addresses from the SDN list, which collectively hold just over 10,000 tokens. One of them holds USDT on the blockchain of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Analysts did not find similar wallets on Arbitrum and Optimism.

In August 2022, Tornado Cash was added to OFAC’s sanction list, but Tether refused to block addresses tied to the cryptocurrency mixer without proper requests from authorities.

In November, the USDT issuer froze 46,370,701 USDT belonging to FTX on the Tron blockchain at the request of law enforcement. At the same time, the company stated there were no plans to bail out the Bitcoin exchange.

In October 2023, Tether blocked 32 addresses totaling $873,118.34. The company linked them to illicit activity, financing of terrorism, and the war in Israel and Ukraine.

In November, the issuer blocked about 225 million USDT linked to an international criminal syndicate. The volume of frozen funds in the stablecoin was described as “the largest in history”.