Tether CEO: Involvement in Iran's stablecoin trading volume decreased by 94%

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino posted on the X platform that U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal's "analysis" of the Tether sanctions report overlooked one point: since 2023, Tether has, on average, frozen related addresses 4 weeks ahead of the formal sanctions identified by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Israeli National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF), and in 99% of cases, the freeze was completed before Chainalysis marked the related addresses.

He stated that Tether's actions have led to a 94% decrease in stablecoin trading volume related to Iran. Previously, on September 28, Blumenthal released a report from the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, stating that among 846 sanctioned wallets related to Iran and its proxies, 84% almost exclusively used USDT for transactions, and he wrote to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Department of Justice requesting an investigation into Tether.