Tether Freezes $344M in USDT on Tron Blockchain in Coordination with OFAC

Gate News message, April 23 — Tether froze two large whale wallets on the Tron blockchain holding a combined $344 million in USDT on Wednesday in coordination with the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and U.S. law enforcement. The two addresses held approximately $131.3 million and $212.9 million respectively, and both were halted within minutes before 11:30 a.m. UTC.

The frozen amount represents 1.8% of all Tron-based USDT in circulation per day. Tether works with over 340 law enforcement organizations across 65 nations on compliance matters. This freeze follows a larger action in January when Tether froze between $182 million and $339 million across different Tron wallets. In February, Tether disclosed it had frozen approximately $4.2 billion in stablecoins due to illicit activities. The T3 Financial Crime Unit, a collaboration between TRON, Tether, and TRM Labs established in September 2024, froze over $300 million in criminal funds within its first year.

Tron’s active wallet address count has declined by 21% since the freeze, dropping from approximately 5.3 million to under 4.2 million between February 7 and April 21, according to on-chain data. Daily transaction volumes fell by nearly 15%, marking the largest decline since October 2025. This activity decline occurred despite TRX price increasing approximately 20% over the same period, with open interest rates falling 5.04% and negative funding rates indicating trader caution.

The freeze also coincides with growing regulatory scrutiny around Tron and its founder, Justin Sun. Sun has filed a lawsuit in California federal court against WLFI, a decentralized finance project, for wrongfully freezing his $75 million in WLFI assets, which he claims involved a hidden blacklist functionality in the contract.