tether

The issuer of the stablecoin USDT, Tether, stated on September 28 that actions involving USDT in 2026 have frozen approximately $550 million, with the related wallets identified by U.S. authorities as being associated with the Central Bank of Iran and the Iranian sanctions network. Tether claimed that its cooperation with U.S. and international authorities has supported over 2,900 investigations globally, with more than 1,600 involving U.S. law enforcement agencies.According to Tether, in April 2026, it assisted in freezing over $344 million USDT across two addresses based on information provided by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and U.S. law enforcement agencies. The next day, OFAC listed these addresses as digital currency identifiers of the Central Bank of Iran, with the sanctions entry associated with the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah. In July 2026, the Treasury expanded the designated scope to four additional TRON addresses, with over $130 million USDT frozen across the four wallets.Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that USDT is not a safe haven for sanctioned actors, terrorist organizations, or criminal networks, and that public blockchains allow authorities to see the flow of funds, enabling Tether to take action when law enforcement provides credible information. Tether also mentioned that it collaborates with over 340 law enforcement agencies in 67 countries, and its wallet freezing policy has been aligned with the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals list.

A survey by the Democratic Party of the U.S. Senate claims that the stablecoin USDT issued by Tether has become a major payment method for Iran. The survey shows that among over 800 sanctioned cryptocurrency wallets, about 84% primarily or exclusively use USDT.The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had previously stated that its review of blockchain records, sanctions lists, and asset seizure notices found that the sanctioned wallets are mainly distributed across the Tron and Ethereum networks and have conducted USDT transactions.

According to official news, Tether announced a partnership with the fintech company Shiga to utilize its open-source Wallet Development Kit (WDK) to launch self-custody financial products for individuals and institutions in Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.The two parties will launch two core products: the self-custody wallet ENTA for individuals and businesses, which supports deposits in fiat currency or Bitcoin, and holds and transfers Tether (USDT), Bitcoin, and Tether Gold (XAUT); and the infrastructure Pulse for banks and financial institutions, aimed at assisting institutions in customizing digital asset services for specific payment channels and fund settlement processes, and supporting institutions in deploying in a private environment to retain key control.In addition, Shiga is currently completing the final approval process for the digital asset license in Nigeria, and once approved, will conduct compliant digital asset trading, brokerage, and custody services in the country.

According to informed sources, the Trump administration is considering launching an overseas stablecoin program, which may take the form of a joint venture with private enterprises. The Department of the Treasury, the State Department, and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) may all participate to expand the use of the U.S. dollar and support demand for U.S. Treasury bonds.Tether's latest reserve report shows that as of June 30, it directly holds $11.496 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds, with total reserve assets of $18.775 billion, exceeding liabilities by $4.11 billion. The plan has not yet established a partnership with Tether and has not yet become an officially operational project.

According to CoinDesk, the stablecoin issuer Tether stated that its assets held in the licensed digital bank EQIBank in Dominica account for less than 0.034% of the group's total assets. Based on Tether's disclosed total group assets of $18.775 billion in June, its related exposure is approximately $64 million, but Tether did not disclose the specific amount.It was reported that EQIBank processes customer funds through the U.S. payment processor Capstone, which utilizes accounts at Wells Fargo and JPMorgan for fund transfers. U.S. prosecutors have seized funds related to Capstone's accounts and filed a civil forfeiture lawsuit, accusing it of making false representations about its business to the bank. EQIBank stated that approximately $89 million in funds have been seized, equivalent to about 80% of its monetary assets, which may expose it to liquidation risks.Previously, EQIBank provided banking services to Tether, including processing wire transfers related to the purchase and redemption of USDT. Tether stated that it is not aware of the actions related to Capstone as alleged by the U.S. Department of Justice.

According to on-chain data, Tether has successfully frozen 218,000 USDT in the stolen address from Bitget, which is a "three-hop" associated address of the initial stolen address from Bitget. This address remained inactive for over 2.5 hours after being discovered.Crypto KOL tanuki42 initiated a tracking of "Circle vs Tether" at that time and asked which of the two companies would freeze the related assets first.Currently, Circle has frozen the related stolen assets 7 hours and 18 minutes earlier than Tether.

According to on-chain analyst tanuki42, the address 0xe07 holds 100,000 USDC and 218,000 USDT, which come from the initial address of stolen funds from Bitget. This batch of funds has been idle for over 2.5 hours, after which they publicly called on Circle and Tether to freeze the assets.At 5 PM, crypto researcher SomaXBT posted that Circle has frozen the USDC assets and specifically called on Tether to follow up. As of the time of publication, Tether has not responded.

According to a report by The Information, Tether has some funds trapped at one of its offshore banking partners, which is facing liquidation risk after asset seizures in the United States.Tether stated that the assets it holds at the bank EQIBank are limited, accounting for less than 0.034% of its total assets.

According to official news, Tether, corporate and institutional bank Pave Bank, and the Singapore non-profit organization GFTN (Global Financial and Technology Network) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on September 24, 2026, to jointly explore the launch of the "Georgia-Singapore FinTech Scholar Program."The program aims to select outstanding STEM undergraduates from Tbilisi State University to study for one semester at Singapore Management University starting in 2027. The content will cover academic courses, industry exchanges, mentorship, and a graduation project focusing on the Georgia-Southeast Asia FinTech corridor. Participants will also have the opportunity for internships with partner organizations and access to GFTN's global knowledge network resources.Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that this collaboration aims to open global opportunities for young talent and help build a more inclusive financial future.

The stablecoin giant Tether's Tether AI Research today released QVAC Genesis III, a synthetic training dataset aimed at the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, with a scale of 19.143 billion tokens, covering 159.6 million documents.It is reported that Tether hopes to enhance the reasoning and teaching capabilities of small AI models, allowing more AI assistants to run directly on laptops, mobile phones, and local servers, reducing the ongoing reliance on large cloud models.Genesis III continues the data lineage of Genesis I and Genesis II, covering 19 curriculum-related fields including biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, medicine, electrical engineering, and machine learning, aimed at high school, university, and professional applications. Tether states that the dataset will focus on training models to explain problem-solving paths, identify erroneous reasoning, and provide corrections, rather than just outputting final answers.According to Tether's disclosed test results, a 1.7 billion parameter model trained with Genesis III option-level data achieved an effective answer rate of 99.45% in relevant benchmark tests. Compared to the Cosmopedia-v2 training model of similar token scale, Genesis III improved scores on the ARC-Easy, ARC-Challenge, and MMLU STEM benchmarks by 28.57, 21.35, and 15.03 percentage points, respectively.

Former client manager Lin Junxian of China Construction Bank (Asia) Co., Ltd. admitted to conspiring with an employee of a fintech company and his accomplices to accept bribes, totaling over 470,000 US dollars in cryptocurrency "Tether," to illegally certify multiple false documents without bank authorization, serving as collateral for several insurance-related investment transactions.An internal investigation by China Construction Bank (Asia) uncovered the incident, which subsequently led to a corruption complaint to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and provided full assistance. Judge Lin Jin Hong postponed the sentencing of the case to September 18, during which the defendant remains in custody under the supervision of the Correctional Services Department.

According to Bloomberg, the stablecoin issuer Tether has become an important lender of gold. As of the end of June, the financing provided by Tether to the U.S. gold trading platform Gold.com accounted for most of its $1.7 billion in outstanding precious metal leases.Gold.com’s payables and advance payments to Tether totaled $1.45 billion. Tether invested in this platform earlier this year.

Tether posted on platform X that USDT has been launched on the privacy protocol Zama.

The blockchain data platform Allium released the report "Stablecoins and Payment Status: September 2026." The report shows that in August 2026, the supply of stablecoins reached $303 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6%, with Tether and Circle accounting for 85% combined. Exchanges held $89 billion, and DeFi protocols held $26 billion.In the first eight months of 2026, stablecoin payments reached between $401 billion and $527 billion, a year-on-year increase of 42% to 63%. Enterprises received 58% to 64% of the payments, with B2B being the largest channel. The growth rate of cross-border stablecoin payments is seven times that of traditional fiat channels. From January to August, the total transfer volume reached $85 trillion, and after excluding internal exchange transfers, DeFi, and infrastructure transfers, the real economic activity was $4.0 trillion, of which transactions accounted for 69%, value storage accounted for 13%, and payments accounted for up to 13%.B2B settlements reached between $137 billion and $153 billion. In corporate operations, service fees were $56 billion, salaries $43 billion, vendor payments $28 billion, and retail purchases $19 billion. In geographically attributed payments, 61% were domestic. Thailand received $10.8 billion, Turkey $7.8 billion, Indonesia $6.3 billion, and Mexico $6.1 billion. The proxy payments on the x402 protocol reached 29 million monthly transfers in August, averaging $0.06 per transfer. Ether.fi Cash's monthly expenditure increased to $108 million.

According to Cointelegraph, Tether's stablecoin USDT was involved in a failed oil deal in Venezuela, resulting in a loss of approximately $230 million for Polish state-owned energy giant Orlen.The transaction took place at the end of 2023, when Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA began requiring payments in USDT to evade U.S. financial sanctions. In November 2023, Samer Awad, a former executive of Orlen's trading subsidiary Orlen Trading Switzerland, led the procurement of 6 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil from PDVSA. On December 4, Orlen transferred a $230 million advance payment to Dubai seller Hannon International Middle East, which exchanged USDT through multiple cryptocurrency brokers and intermediaries. However, most of the funds went missing during the transfers, and Orlen only received about $29 million worth of crude oil before terminating the contract.The flow of funds shows that Hannon exchanged $400,000 in commission for $80 million in USDT and transferred $135 million to Horizon Global, claiming to have only received $85 million in USDT. In January 2024, Hannon employees delivered two USB drives containing $60 million and $50 million in USDT to brokers in Caracas. In January 2025, the Warsaw regional prosecutor's office announced an investigation into the related oil contracts, involving losses of approximately $378 million.

According to a report by Sina Finance, Lin Junxian, a former client manager of China Construction Bank (Asia) Corporation Limited, admitted to conspiring with an employee of a financial technology company and his accomplices to accept bribes, totaling over 470,000 US dollars in cryptocurrency "Tether." They illegally certified multiple false documents without the bank's authorization to secure several insurance-related investment transactions.An internal investigation by China Construction Bank (Asia) uncovered the incident, which was subsequently reported to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) along with full cooperation. Judge Lin Jianhong has postponed the sentencing of the case to September 18, during which the defendant will remain in custody under the Correctional Services Department.

ARK Invest crypto analyst Lorenzo Valente stated that stablecoins have a significant network effect. Although there are thousands of stablecoins in the market, as the market capitalization threshold increases, the number of tiers is rapidly leveling off. Currently, the stablecoins that are truly worth paying attention to are those with a market capitalization exceeding 10 billion dollars, gradually moving towards the 100 billion and 500 billion dollar levels.Data shows that the number of stablecoins with a market capitalization exceeding 1 billion dollars has only increased from single digits to the current 12 since 2021, while the number of stablecoins with a market capitalization exceeding 10 billion dollars has actually decreased from its peak in 2022, with only Tether and Circle's stablecoins remaining. Valente believes that entering the 10 billion dollar market capitalization club has become very difficult, and in the future, the 100 billion dollar level stablecoins may only have two competitors for a long time, while it may take more than two years for only one to reach the 500 billion dollar level.

The Block Research released a report on September 8, stating that during the period from October 2025 to August 2026, Bitcoin fell by over 50% and the total cryptocurrency market value decreased by over $2 trillion, while the total supply of stablecoins remained around $290 billion, with about 90% issued by Tether and Circle.In the past 365 days, the transaction volume of stablecoins exceeded $90 trillion, more than doubling compared to 2025. The daily turnover rate increased from 0.38 times in August 2024 to 0.78 times in August 2026. Ethereum holds about $147 billion (turnover rate 0.51 times/day), Base holds $4.5 billion (16.7 times/day), Solana about $13 billion (1.08 times/day), and Tron over $90 billion (0.25 times/day). The Bank for International Settlements statistics indicate that the stablecoin transaction volume in 2025 was about $35 trillion, with payment-related transactions accounting for 1.1%. Chainalysis data shows that in 2025, illegal addresses received at least $154 billion in stablecoins.The GENIUS Act was signed in July 2025. In April 2026, FinCEN and OFAC jointly proposed to classify payment stablecoin issuers as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act, and in August, the Treasury proposed a definition to clarify the scope of applicability, which is still a proposal. Companies such as Paxos, zerohash, Rain, and Altitude describe a shift from one-time KYC at onboarding to continuous lifecycle monitoring of on-chain behavior, counterparties, turnover rates, and geographic locations.

According to the official announcement, Tether has announced the joint launch of a $400 million private credit fund, StableFund, in collaboration with Fasanara Capital, aiming to attract third-party institutional capital to $3 billion.The fund will provide short-term, asset-backed credit financing to small and medium-sized enterprises in over 60 countries worldwide. Tether will provide USDT settlement infrastructure and financing opportunities, while Fasanara will act as the investment manager.Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated, "USDT is designed to be a frictionless global currency available around the clock," and through this fund, Tether's financing network will be transformed into a direct capital channel flowing to the businesses and communities that need it most.

Tether froze approximately $39.3 million USDT across 10 addresses on the Tron network earlier today, which are related to Xinbi Guarantee. Insiders revealed that Xinbi Guarantee is a guaranteed trading market that emerged around 2022 on Telegram.Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs has described it as one of the largest illegal cryptocurrency markets in Southeast Asia, stating that the platform has processed a cumulative transaction volume of about $24.2 billion. The on-chain tracking platform MistTrack was the first to disclose the news regarding the frozen USDT. This freeze indicates that Tether is further taking on-chain asset freezing measures to restrict addresses deemed to be associated with high risk or suspected illegal activities.