Tether Freezes $344M in Tron Whale Wallets Coordinated with OFAC; Tron Active Addresses Drop 21%

Gate News message, April 23 — Tether froze two large wallets on the Tron blockchain holding a combined $344 million in USDT on Wednesday morning, in coordination with the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and U.S. law enforcement. The two addresses held approximately $131.3 million and $212.9 million respectively and were halted within minutes before 11:30 am UTC. The frozen amount represents roughly 1.8% of all Tron-based USDT in circulation.

Tether confirmed the action was executed as part of standard compliance procedures with official requests from U.S. and foreign agencies. The company currently works with over 340 law enforcement organizations across 65 nations. This freeze follows a larger enforcement action in January when Tether froze between $182 million and $339 million across multiple Tron wallets. According to Reuters, Tether revealed in February that it had frozen approximately $4.2 billion in stablecoins due to suspected illicit use. The T3 Financial Crime Unit, a collaborative initiative by TRON, Tether, and TRM Labs established in September 2024, announced in January that it had frozen over $300 million in criminal funds within its first year.

Tron’s network activity has declined noticeably following the freeze. Active wallet addresses on Tron fell 21% from approximately 5.3 million to less than 4.2 million between February 7 and April 21, while daily transaction volumes dropped by nearly 15%—the largest decline since October 2025. Market analysts attribute part of the downturn to regulatory and reputational pressures surrounding Tron and its founder Justin Sun, who is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with WLFI, a decentralized finance project, over the wrongful freezing of $75 million in WLFI assets.

Despite the network slowdown, TRX price has increased approximately 20% over the same period, rising from around $0.278 to $0.333 over 74 days. However, on-chain metrics show weakness: the seven-day average of active addresses declined 21%, open interest fell 5.04%, and negative funding rates emerged, suggesting traders remain cautious despite the price gains. TRX has been rejected twice at the same resistance level within five days despite strong momentum.