Tether freezes $150 million in USDT

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Tether has added three more ethereum addresses to its blacklist that hold more than $150 million worth of USDT stablecoins between them.

As a centralized company, Tether is able to blacklist addresses it believes are involved in crime, money laundering, or for any other reason it chooses.

This is the first time Tether has blacklisted addresses in 2022, but it added 312 addresses to the blacklist last year and has added 563 addresses since it first did so on November 28, 2017.

Tether did not disclose why the three new addresses were blacklisted, but it has used its powers to blacklist addresses involved in cyberattacks and law enforcement investigations. After the Kucoin hack in September 2020, Tether About $35 million USDT frozen to prevent hackers from taking advantage of their theft.

There may also be “preventive reasons” for blacklisting, e.g. related to scams, CIO of Arcane Asset Eric Wall pointed out As a reason to freeze Tether alone in 2020.

Concerns about a lack of decentralization may be a factor driving the adoption of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin by algorithmic stablecoin blockchain Terra. It is currently the fourth largest stablecoin with a market cap of $10.6 billion. However, the market cap of the decentralized challenger still dwarfs that of USDT, the world’s fourth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $78.5 billion.

related: Crypto Regulatory Issues Make Decentralized Stablecoins Attractive to DeFi Investors

Terra’s founder, Do Kwon, responded to news of Tether’s actions on Twitter, saying that UST addresses could not be blacklisted.