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Tether Freezes 161 Ethereum Wallets and Over 3.5 Million USDT Tokens
Tether, the organization behind the widely-used stablecoin USDT, has taken a proactive stance in compliance with United States sanctions.
The company recently announced the freezing of 161 Ethereum wallets, a move that aligns with the U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Controls (OFAC) list of sanctioned individuals.
Tether Takes Proactive Stance in Compliance with US Sanctions
Tether, in its announcement, described its decision as a self-initiated action aimed at preemptively averting possible misuse of its tokens and boosting security. The company also stated that it would freeze current and future wallets listed by the OFAC.
This policy marks one of the first major initiatives undertaken by Paolo Ardoino, who recently transitioned from CTO to CEO of the company. In the press release, Ardoino applauded the policy as a step towards strengthening Tether’s collaboration with international regulatory and law enforcement agencies.
The freeze affected 161 Ethereum wallets, but it is important to note that 150 of them did not hold any USDT at the time. Among the 11 wallets containing USDT, there is an uneven distribution of tokens.Two addresses contain approximately 20,000 tokens each, while a third holds nearly 60,000. The remaining wallets have significantly lower amounts, with one holding 16 cents in USDT.
According to data from Etherscan, a blockchain analytics platform, this enforcement action has led to the freezing of over 3.5 million USDT tokens. The majority of these tokens, approximately 3.4 million, are held by a single address.
This particular wallet has been linked by blockchain investigator ZachXBT to a recent hacking incident involving the betting platform Stake that resulted in the online crypto casino losing around $41 million from its hot wallets.This wallet also exhibited activity just before Tether’s enforcement action, with hundreds of transactions recorded in the preceding week.
Tether’s Freeze Exposes Mysterious Transactions
A closer look at the transactions reveals intriguing details. Just a day before the freeze, one of the impacted wallets engaged in significant token movement, routing over 400,000 USDT through two other wallets from THORChain.
These transactions have made the trail of funds more complex and have raised questions as the two intermediary wallets were not frozen by Tether.
The scope of Tether’s actions extends beyond the Ethereum mainnet. Investigations into Layer 2 networks on Ethereum, such as Polygon, revealed two wallets with USDT holdings, although the combined total was just over 10,000 tokens.
Further searches on other networks like Arbitrum and Optimism did not show any wallets with USDT balances under the sanctioned addresses.#ContentStar##Gate post Highlights##HotColumn##ContentMining##HotTopicDiscussion# Over $400 Million Liquidated as Bitcoin (BTC) Price Slumped to Weekly Lows Under $41K
Bitcoin was trading steady at around $44,000 before the bears took control over the market and initiated a massive dump that drove the asset to a weekly low of just under $41,000.
With most altcoins in a similar freefall state, the total value of liquidated positions has skyrocketed to over $400 million on a daily scale.BTC remained relatively calm at around $44,000 following the bullish business week, in which the cryptocurrency soared by more than 11%.
This resulted in tapping $44,700 at the end of the week, which became its highest price tag in over a year and a half.
However, Monday morning started on a negative note with a massive price dump that drove the largest cryptocurrency south hard. In a matter of an hour, BTC slumped from around $44,000 to just under $41,000 (on Bitstamp) to register a weekly low.It has recovered some ground and currently trades above $42,000. However, this has only harmed over-leveraged traders as the total value of liquidated positions has soared to more than $400 million on a 24-hour scale.
The number stands at $360 million in the past 12 hours. In total, 120,000 traders have been liquidated within the past day, and the single largest wrecked position was worth over $8 million and took place on OKX.
The altcoins are in no better shape, as Ripple, Cardano, Polkadot, Chainlink, Shiba Inu, and many others have dumped by over 6% in a day. Avalanche is the only larger-cap alts sitting in the green now.#ContentStar##HotTopicDiscussion##HotColumn##ContentMining##Gate post Highlights# appears to be thawing, bouncing to the $43,000-$46,000 range, up 159% from last December as tracked by Dow Jones Market Data Group. The upward move could be the start of a new cycle.
"There seems to be a lot of retail investor sentiment that's been sidelined. There hasn't been the hype and excitement that you've seen kind of mid to late cycle of the last crypto rally. So that actually gives us confidence that we're still a little bit early innings, that there's a lot of capital that has a cushion," John Todaro, senior research analyst, Needham & Company, told FOX Business.
Several tailwinds are fueling the recent run. The Federal Reserve, which ends its final meeting of the year Wednesday, may start cutting rates in March 2024, according to forecasts tracked by the CME’s FedWatch Tool, which would be supportive of cryptos. After ending 2023 on a high, crypto investors will be watching central bank interest rates and a U.S. regulatory decision on new bitcoin products as they decide how to place their bets next year.
Cryptocurrencies staged a recovery this year after a torrid 2022 in which a market meltdown and a string of scandals, including the collapse of FTX and fraud charges against its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, undermined the credibility of the industry.
The price of bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency and the market's chief barometer, has more than doubled this year, reaching a 20-month high in November of $42,000 per token. As of Friday, 2023 was its best year since 2020 in terms of percentage gains.
The market has been buoyed by expectations that cooling inflation will allow central banks globally to forgo further rate hikes and start easing next year, making risk assets more attractive. A long-anticipated move by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) to approve a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) has also been a boost.
Those themes, along with bitcoin's expected April "halving" - a process that reduces token supply - will continue to be positives for the market next year, said analysts, although some cautioned the market is unlikely to rescale its 2021 record highs. 
