Tether says Iran-linked USDT volumes fell 94% after freezes

Tether’s wallet freezes cut Iran-linked stablecoin volumes by 94%, chief executive Paolo Ardoino said in a post on X on 19 October, rejecting a Senate report that accused the stablecoin issuer of aiding Iran’s shadow banking network.

Senator Blumenthal's "analysis" of Tether's sanctions report misses that, since 2023, Tether froze on average 4 weeks prior to OFAC & NBCTF official sanction designation and for 99% of the times Tether froze the reported addresses before Chainalysis labelled them.

Tether…

— Paolo Ardoino ? (@paoloardoino) October 19, 2026

Ardoino said in the post that since 2023 Tether has frozen flagged addresses on average four weeks before the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF) issue their designations, and before the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis labelled them 99% of the time. “Tether actions led to Iran-linked stablecoin volumes declining by 94%. The reality shows that Tether acts fast on new threats thanks to its law enforcement partnerships,” he wrote.

What the Senate report said

Democrats on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published their report on 28 September, led by the panel’s top Democrat, Senator Richard Blumenthal. It accused Tether of providing “a significant financial lifeline within Iran’s shadow banking network”. The report examined 846 sanctioned wallets with Iranian links and found that 84% predominantly used Tether’s USDT, and it concentrated in part on the period before 2024, when it said Tether did not comprehensively freeze flagged wallets.

Tether has not disputed that finding on wallet dominance. It points instead to the freezes, the dollar totals and the four-week lead as evidence that its controls work, and the company’s rebuttal statistics start in 2023, so they only partly cover the years the report criticised.

The company figures

Tether says it blocked approximately $550 million in USDT linked to Iran during 2026, with freezes in April and July together accounting for more than $470 million of that total. Ardoino also spoke remotely at DC Fintech Week on 13 October, where he criticised the report’s release to the media before Tether could review it. “I believe it’s important for the public also to hear our side of the story,” he said.

Independent figures point in the same direction, though they measure something different. Data from TRM Labs shows USDT’s share of on-chain volume in Iran-attributed wallets fell from 67% in 2025 to 14% in August 2026. A falling share does not by itself confirm Tether’s 94% volume claim, which carries no published methodology.

The rebuttal lands as European regulators press for tighter treatment of non-compliant stablecoins, and as a BIS paper argues that banks can slow stablecoin growth by paying savers more.

Blumenthal is separately probing the relationship between Tether and its US financial partner Cantor Fitzgerald, which has close ties to the Trump administration. Tether named Bo Hines, Trump’s former White House crypto adviser, as chief executive of its US division last autumn.

For traders in USDT pairs, the dispute is a headline risk rather than an immediate supply event, since the freezes target sanctioned addresses.