Ther, the issuer of the leading stablecoin USDt, has already blacklisted 39 Ethereum addresses holding the stablecoin since November 2017.
According to Philippe Castonguay, an Ethereum researcher at Horizon Games, 24 of the 39 addresses identified were blacklisted this year. Castonguay created a dashboard on Dune Analytics that shows the addresses that Tether blacklisted.
Turns out 39 addresses have been banned from using USDT on Ethereum as of now. Made another dashboard to keep track of USDT bans here:https://t.co/uuQd1kW28Y https://t.co/sUAw5hnWur pic.twitter.com/72G7OKNlfI
— Philippe Castonguay (@PhABCD) July 9, 2020
When an address is blacklisted it can no longer send, receive, or redeem USDt tokens, which essentially means the tokens held in the address become unusable. The addresses that Tether blacklisted over time have millions worth of USDt in them combined, with the latest one having nearly $1 million worth of tokens in it.
The address, according to Etherscan data, received a938,965 USDt tokens from Binance 26 days ago, before it was blacklisted by Tether. The owner of the address appears to have tried to move the funds the next day, but the transaction was reverted.
Most of the blacklisted addresses appear to have less than $100 worth of USDt tokens in them, while the address with the largest amount appears to be 0x5c27cc68fe01a3994807b60a6c81d8ba638b4ba1 with a total of 4.56 million UISDt in it. Notably, the address also has 330,000 BUSD tokens in it, and 13,500 ETH.
While it isn’t clear who owns the address, the funds it received appear to have come from an address that originally got the cryptocurrency holdings by withdrawing funds from Binance. Most addresses Tether likely blacklisted most address in the list -if not all – responding to requests from law enforcement.
As CryptoGlobe reported, the CENTRE Consortium recently backlisted its first USDC address on the Ethereum network, responding to a request from authorities. On its website, Circle notes an address may be blacklisted when there is a potential security breach or a threat to the network itself, or to “comply with a law, regulation or legal order from a duly recognized U.S. authorized authority, U.S. court of competent jurisdiction or other governmental authority with jurisdiction over CENTRE.”
Featured image via Pixabay.
