Tether Freezes $182 Million in USDT Across Multiple Tron Wallets

• Tether froze over $180 million in USDT on January 11, impacting five Tron-based wallets.
• Despite the news, USDT remains the dominant stablecoin with nearly $187 billion in market capitalization.

The company behind USDT, Tether, had frozen more than $180 million in USDT on January 11, according to data from blockchain surveillance website Whale Alert.​

The freezes were carried out in five consecutive transactions, affecting several Tron-based wallets with sums that range from $12 million to $50 million; a total of $182 million in USDT was taken from active circulation in a single day.

Source: Whale Alert

Tether keeps the administrative keys in the USDT smart contracts it produces, which allows it to freeze tokens at the issuer level immediately. These freeze executions show connectivity with law enforcement agencies.

Tether often freezes payments in response to the demands from the US Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Secret Service to freeze funds.  However, Tether has not explicitly stated the exact basis for the freezes.

Stablecoin Centralization Debate Grows

This freezing action has sparked questions regarding the centralization of stablecoins, highlighting the greater contradiction in the crypto market. While cryptocurrencies are mainly viewed as not subject to censorship, stablecoins, which currently account for about 60% of the market, remain strictly regulated.​

Unlike decentralized assets like Bitcoin, stablecoins such as USDT can be halted or frozen at the issuer’s discretion, particularly in the face of legal or governmental pressure.​

This strong compliance stance has become important as criminal networks increasingly rely on dollar-pegged tokens. With that, the chainanalysis report says that illicit financial operations have shifted significantly, where stablecoins, now being the preferred one for criminal activities, accounted for 84% of total unlawful transaction volume by the latter part of 2025.

However, the frozen news does not affect the dominance of the Tether(USDT) market in the Stablecoin market. As per CoinMarketCap data, currently, the USDT token has nearly $187 billion as its market capitalization, and the overall stablecoin market capitalization stands at $316 billion, so USDT alone still accounts for around 59.18%, with that,  USDT continues to maintain a clear lead in the stablecoin market.

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