Tether freezes $344M in Tron wallets; active addresses drop 21%

Tether froze $344 million in USDT held in two Tron blockchain wallets on Wednesday. Blockchain records and a company confirmation show the addresses held roughly $131.3 million and $212.9 million and were halted just before 11:30 a.m. UTC. Tether said the action was carried out in coordination with the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and U.S. law enforcement.

The freezes were completed within minutes of each other, according to on-chain data. The combined amount represented about 1.8% of the daily supply of USDT issued on Tron. Tether described freezes as a standard response to official law enforcement and regulatory information requests and said it cooperates with more than 340 law enforcement agencies across 65 countries.

On X, Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s chief technology officer, wrote that freezes are “an inherent necessity of blockchain management” and that the company routinely works with regulators and investigators worldwide. Digital asset researcher Tia Avet commented, “Tron markets itself as a decentralized chain of freedom, yet its largest token, USDT, can be frozen with a few keystrokes — and it’s happening more frequently.”

The action follows earlier freezes involving Tron-based USDT. In January, Tether halted between roughly $182 million and $339 million across multiple Tron wallets during a global compliance effort. Tether reported in February that it had frozen about $4.2 billion in its stablecoins linked to illicit activity. The T3 Financial Crime Unit, formed by TRON, Tether and an analytics firm in September 2024, reported it had frozen more than $300 million in criminal funds within a year.

On-chain activity on Tron showed a marked decline after the freezes. Data from network explorers indicate active wallet addresses fell about 21% and daily transaction volumes dropped nearly 15% — the largest decline on the network since October 2025. A seven-day average of active addresses fell from about 5.3 million to under 4.2 million between Feb. 7 and April 21.

Market measures were mixed. The TRX token rose from about $0.278 to $0.333 over a 74-day span, roughly a 20% increase. Open interest on derivatives contracts decreased about 5.04% and funding rates turned negative at times, reflecting more cautious positioning among leveraged traders.

The enforcement comes amid other disputes involving Tron and its founder, Justin Sun. Sun filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court against a decentralized finance project, alleging the project concealed a blacklist function and wrongfully froze his assets valued at $75 million. Body-camera footage from a 2022 arrest of one of the project’s co-founders has also resurfaced online.