Topic: Stablecoins and Blacklists (Read 1333 times)

Exactly due to the blacklist problem, I would be interested in stablecoins based on the Bitcoin blockchain. (AFAIK the Omni version of Tether can't be blocked based on a blacklist [1], but anyway is deprecated now).

In the last months a new candidate has emerged, called BAMK. It uses the Runes protocol for the stablecoin. The Runes token is NUSD•NUSD•NUSD•NUSD. (yes, that's the correct name, because Runes currently only supports long names to avoid squatting).

I'm not very much a friend of the Runes system, but a stablecoin would not be a harmful application of the technology. Basically it's very similar to Omni, Counterparty and other previous token protocols on Bitcoin.

The BAMK stablecoin, the NUSD, is backed by USDe (Ethena). But there are unfortunately some characteristics of this project that look like red flags. For example, in the FAQs you can see this:


The team has been "doxxed" on "Telegram" according to the website, but there is not really a localizable company behind the project which can be made accountable.

The USDe collateral is held on Ethereum as shown here. There seems to be no technical connection between the reserves and the NUSD on the Bitcoin chain (which would also be quite difficult or impossible to achieve).

Holders of NUSD also earn BAMK rewards for some reason.

So far it unfortunately looks very shady or at least dilettantly built. Makes me actually remember the NuBits project from 2014 a bit ...

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[1] I refer here that Tether can't prevent Omni tokens to be transferred, as they are simple Bitcoin transactions with an OP_RETURN data string. Of course what they can do is to refuse to accept USDT from being redeemed if they come from a blacklisted address. This would mean basically that a blacklisted USDT could be worth nothing. However I think it would be impractical to enforce that, because that means every person accepting USDT-Omni must be aware of the blacklist all the time to avoid being scammed with invalid tokens ...

Why is this a surprise to many? It's obvious that a centralized stablecoin will censor or freeze transactions it deems suspicious. They must comply with regulations or else. Using a stablecoin like Tether, would be no different than using a credit card or CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). If you want true freedom and censorship-resistance, I'd suggest you get into decentralized stablecoins such as DAI and USDJ. I mean if you're worried about getting blacklisted in the future. Tether only blacklists addresses tied to criminal activity (money laundering, terrorist financing, etc), so if you have nothing to hide and are a law-abiding citizen, you should have no problem using USDT for daily payments. Decentralized stablecoins are for the true paranoid.

Tether has been shady from the start, so seeing the government investigating it is not surprising to me. As long as the company is strictly abiding with US regulations, it should have nothing to worry about. I think USDC is more diligent in this regard than USDT. But that's just my opinion. The question is: Will Tether survive scrutiny from the US government? Only time will tell.

This is the kind of stuff that inspired The Standard (https://www.thestandard.io/). That said, it's rather unclear if the end result will ever align with the original vision partly gold-backed DAO-managed defi stablecoin.

This alone is good enough to literally not go with USDT if you read what they say. Realizing that they are checked this closely and they are tied to whatever government tells them to do, it is clear that if we put our money into this, then we are taking a risk that we shouldn't be taking and that is why it wouldn't be a smart idea at all.

I believe we are capable of putting our money into many other things, and if you are not really certain about putting it in crypto, just take it out to fiat, you do not have to keep it in tether or any other stablecoin. Fiat itself, is literally better than any stablecoin and this is why you either should be in crypto or be out of crypto, being in stablecoins is like crypto version of fiat, makes no sense to be in there.

"Since its inception, Tether has attracted the attention of the U.S. government 19 times" https://cointelegraph.com/



https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/10/28/tethers-paolo-ardoino-if-the-us-government-wanted-to-kill-us-they-can-press-a-button/
"Tether is doing "the best we can" to crack down on illicit crypto use, CEO Paolo Ardoino told CoinDesk. USDT's role in illicit finance is a "drop in the ocean" compared to the U.S. dollar's, he added.
The company "doesn't expect any political favors by anyone," he said of Howard Lutnick's role in Donald Trump's campaign.
A WSJ report Friday said Tether is under U.S. criminal investigation, which the company denied."

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tether-usdt-best-friend-united-states-ceo
Tether is ‘best friend’ of US, says CEO Paolo Ardoino

"Tether’s relationship with the US government
While focusing more on developing countries, Tether has not overlooked its ties with the US. According to Ardoino, Tether has a “very good relationship” with the US government that is “much better” than that of competitors due to its compliance efforts with local authorities.

“Tether is the only stablecoin that onboarded the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Secret Service,” Tether CEO stated, mentioning that the company also has 180 law enforcement agencies across 45 countries.

Tether also positions itself as a good friend of the US because it holds about $98 billion of US Treasury Bills, making it one of the largest US Treasury holders globally."

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/06/20/stablecoin-issuers-now-18th-largest-holder-of-us-debt/

"Stablecoin issuers are the world's 18th biggest holders of U.S. debt.
Of the many crypto bills in the U.S. political corridors, stablecoin legislation has been the closest to moving past the U.S. Congress to become law.
The U.S. government debt surpassed the $34 trillion mark early this year and has been growing faster, roughly $1 trillion every 100 years. Interest payments on the debt, also known as the debt-servicing cost, are projected to reach $892 billion in 2024. The burgeoning debt has caused the Treasury to step up bond supplies since 2023.
On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office said the national debt could reach $50 trillion by 2034, equaling 122 percent of annual economic output."

https://tether.io/news/tether-advances-beyond-stablecoins-introduces-new-framework-embracing-core-divisions-to-foster-resilient-future-ready-financial-systems/
"Tether, the largest company in the digital asset industry, is embarking on an unstoppable journey beyond its most famous USDT offering. Tether will broaden its mission towards delivering a range of infrastructure solutions for a more inclusive world. Working towards this new framework are four new and distinct business divisions within Tether – Data, Finance, Power, Edu(cation)."

__
I understand them. Either they will be integrated into the current picture of the world or they will be destroyed.

https://www.ibtimes.com/tether-blacklists-4-usdt-wallets-1-20-million-balance-3726396
Tether Blacklists 4 USDT Wallets, 1 With A 20 Million Balance
"Two of the wallets blacklisted Tuesday each had a USDT balance of $500,000
Tether blacklisted 28 wallets in December that allegedly "received billions" in USDT
It voluntarily froze around $225 million in USDT in a November collaborative operation with the DOJ"

Tether Introduces New Policy to Strengthen Ecosystem Security
https://tether.to/en/tether-introduces-new-policy-to-strengthen-ecosystem-security/
"In December 2023, the company announced that it was introducing a new policy according to which it would freeze all wallets included in the US Treasury sanctions list."

"There will be six new changes to the USDC and EURC smart contracts and they’ll be implemented through a single v2.2 upgrade for each supported EVM blockchain. The upgrade is fully backwards-compatible, does not introduce any breaking changes to existing integrations, and requires no action from developers or users. All code changes have been audited by Halborn, a leading third-party blockchain security firm.1

Here are the details on the improvements we’re making:"
https://www.circle.com/blog/announcing-usdc-v2.2

https://twitter.com/paoloardoino/status/1698943028541419795
"While @Tether_to reached 72.5B exposure in US t-bills, being top 22 buyer globally, above United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Australia, Spain, ...

$USDt is the most used stablecoin in the world, with a huge focus on emerging markets. For many of these communities USDt is a lifeline to protect themselves and their families from the insane inflation of their national currencies."


https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1698593300410708011
"China's ownership of US Treasury debt is down almost $481B from peak levels. The rate of selling is accelerating.

For many years the experts always doubted that China would dump our debt because of the impact on their own economy and currency.   

You can see how the line is steepening. China is getting out of US debt and buying Gold instead."

https://tether.to/en/record-profits-reserve-surpluses-and-usdt-at-all-time-highs-a-look-at-tethers-q1-attestation/

"US Treasury Holdings at All-Time Highs

Over the course of 2022, Tether reduced its commercial paper holdings to zero and began purchasing US Treasuries for Tether’s reserves. As of Q1, Tether’s treasury direct holdings reached an all-time high of over $53 billion representing more than 64% of total reserves. In fact, if you were to rank all of the world's countries in order of how many US Treasuries they own, Tether would be just under Mexico.
Bank Deposits Reduced by Over 90%

Tether reduced its bank deposits from $5.3 billion to $481 million in Q1.

100% of All New Issuance Reserved by US Treasuries & Overnight Repo"

__

I am very scared for Tether. Almost all collateral is US bonds, gold and bitcoin less than 6%.

Billions Of Tether’s Reserves Were Stored At Cantor Fitzgerald, Capital Union And Ansbacher
The world’s largest stablecoin moved a massive share of its reserves to Capital Union Bank after settling with New York regulators over claims that it had falsely misrepresented its assets.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2023/02/10/tether-reserves-cantor-capital-union-ansbacher/?sh=508f97354928

https://www.theblock.co/post/210023/tether-reports-700-million-q4-net-profit-in-latest-attestation-report
Tether reports $700 million Q4 net profit in latest attestation report
Tether issued its latest attestation report, saying its assets exceeded its liabilities as of December 2022.
The company said it had a net profit of $700 million in Q4 — which it says is additional to its reserves.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/unusual-crew-behind-tether-cryptos-eminent-stablecoin
The unusual crew behind Tether, crypto’s pre-eminent stablecoin
"The stablecoin has become a lucrative business at center of crypto economy
Tether Holdings Ltd. operates a $68 billion stablecoin at the heart of crypto’s alternative financial universe. Far more tether trades each day than bitcoin."

It's actually so unfortunate that this could happen without any reason whether genuine or not. I want to believe that issues pertaining to blocking of funds are for transactions involving huge sum of money, because it will not be nice to have my little earnings blocked for no reason. We all need to be careful especially when using tether to avoid issues of this nature.

Tether is first cryptocurrency to take a stand with INHOPE against CSAM January 26th, 2023 — Tether Operations Limited (Tether), the company operating the blockchain-enabled platform tether.to that powers the first and most widely used stablecoin, announced today that they will collaborate with INHOPE, the leading global network combatting online Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).Tether will work with INHOPE to share information, facilitate conversations between stakeholders, and take action to drive bad actors out of the crypto ecosystem. Tether is the first cryptocurrency to take a stand with INHOPE against CSAM.
Tether, INHOPE Collaborate to Combat CSAM in Web3

USD₮ vs USDC
https://tether.to/en/understanding-transfer-volumes-and-why-usdt-remains-on-top/
Looking at this question from a different angle, we can compare the number of unique holders of each coin on their top three chains.

USD₮ has 16,640,097 unique holders on Tron
USD₮ has 3,993,999 unique holders on Ethereum
USD₮ has 449,981 unique holders on Solana
USDC has 1,215,427 unique holders on Polygon
USDC has 1,584,336 unique holders on Ethereum
USDC has 1,430,039 unique holders on Solana
Based on this it's apparent that USD₮ has more unique holders on Ethereum alone than USDC has across Polygon, Solana, and Ethereum, and USD₮ has 4x this number of holders on Tron!

https://www.circle.com/blog/circle-releases-first-annual-state-of-the-usdc-economy
Circle Releases First Annual “State of the USDC Economy” Report
"Dollar Digital Currencies Are Driving the Next Evolution of Money, Payments, and Finance
Ten years ago, I co-founded Circle with the vision that traditional money could be brought natively onto the internet in the form of digital currency and made available on open, interoperable, global networks. Ushering in a world of frictionless value exchange that mirrored the frictionless information exchange and communications that marked the first decades of the internet has animated Circle’s work ever since."

https://medium.com/e-money-com/eeur-stablecoin-unwind-cf945820fb3f
EEUR Stablecoin Unwind
e-Money A/S has decided to cease issuance of its EUR backed stablecoin (EEUR)
The issuance stop is effective as of January 9th, 2023. Under the terms and conditions (available at https://e-money.com/legal), e-Money will support redemption until March 6th, 2023, after which further redemption will assessed case by case.

Circle's most recent attestation report shows 30% of USDC's reserves – or $12.79 billion – are invested in its government money market fund, the Circle Reserve Fund, managed by BlackRock. This is up from 0% in October.
https://twitter.com/jp_koning/status/1612087428369498112?

https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/what-is-busd
What Is BUSD?
Updated Dec 28, 2022
BUSD is a regulated, fiat-backed stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. For every unit of BUSD, there is one U.S. dollar held in reserve. In other words, the supply of BUSD is pegged to the U.S. dollar at a 1:1 ratio. Holders can swap their tokens for fiat and vice versa. Paxos, the token’s issuer, releases monthly attestations of BUSD’s reserves.

https://tether.to/en/tether-addresses-fud-around-secured-loans-reveals-plans-to-reduce-these-to-zero-in-2023/
"Understandably, after the events that have unfolded this year, the company recognizes that it is mission critical to restore faith in the market. Today, in addition to dismissing the recent cycle of Tether FUD that’s hitting the rumor mill, Tether is announcing starting from now, throughout 2023, it will reduce secured loans in Tether’s reserves to zero."

https://www.theblock.co/post/189140/curve-releases-whitepaper-and-official-code-for-its-stablecoin
"Curve releases whitepaper and official code for its stablecoin

The official code and whitepaper of Curve Finance’s stablecoin called crvUSD has been released.
The overcollaterized stablecoin will rely on a algorithm called Lending-Liquidating AMM (LLAMMA)."

https://tether.to/en/tether-proves-resilience-of-reserves-in-latest-attestation/
Tether Proves Resilience of Reserves in Latest Attestation

"You can read the latest assurance opinion and the Consolidated Reserves Report: https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/1Xfu4398CIoMiuKjPhvnHM/6d1608c90bb775d2d432b7b24264da28/ESO.02_Std_ISAE_3000R_Opinion_30-9-2022_RC134792022BD0548.pdf
The Management of the Company asserts the following as of 30 September 2022:

The Group’s consolidated total assets amount to at least US$ 68,061,618,458.

The Group’s consolidated total liabilities amount to US$ 67,811,510,720, of which US$67,805,112,981 relates to digital tokens issued.

The Group’s consolidated assets exceed its consolidated liabilities."

https://www.circle.com/en/pressroom/circle-to-bring-euro-coin-and-cross-chain-transfer-protocol-to-solana-in-early-2023

Circle to Bring Euro Coin and Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol to Solana in Early 2023
"LISBON, BOSTON, November 6, 2022 — On stage at Solana Breakpoint today, Circle, a global digital financial technology firm and the issuer of USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin, announced plans to expand native support of Euro Coin and access to their new permissionless cross-chain infrastructure, Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, on Solana in the first half of 2023. The announcement marks the company’s first in a series of intended commitments to provide expanded support for both initiatives since their respective launch announcements in June and September. "

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/10/31/us-tether-bank-fraud-investigation-changes-hands-within-the-doj-report/
US Tether Bank Fraud Investigation Changes Hands Within the DOJ: Report
"The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York will now be handling the investigation, Bloomberg reported Monday.
A criminal investigation into whether Tether’s executives committed bank fraud in the early days of the stablecoin issuer’s existence has been reassigned after months of stagnation, according to Bloomberg.
The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) probe will now be led by U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter."

https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1580091236916289538?
"Dominica 🇩🇲 is the first country in the world to designate blockchain as their national infrastructure and it is #TRON. I changed my name ticker into Dominica 🇩🇲flag. I may suggest to move
@HuobiGlobal
 exchange to Dominica as the national exchange 😎"

Dominica Selects TRON as its National Blockchain to Issue the Country's Official Coin
https://www.benzinga.com/content/29229647/dominica-selects-tron-as-its-national-blockchain-to-issue-the-countrys-official-coin

https://blog.coin98.com/introducing-cusd/
Introducing CUSD - The Next Liquidity Solution for The Cross-chain Economy
"Coin98 is excited to roll out CUSD, the decentralized stablecoin of Coin98 ecosystem.
Today, we are excited to introduce the next building block in our ecosystem - a brand new unit of account for the cross-chain economy - the Coin98 Dollar, also known as CUSD."

____________
by Tether | Oct 13 2022
Tether Slashes Commercial Paper to Zero
https://tether.to/en/tether-slashes-commercial-paper-to-zero/

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/09/13/crypto-lender-maker-turns-to-staked-ether-to-reduce-usdc-influence/
"Crypto lending platform Maker, the world's largest decentralized-finance (DeFi) app, doubled the debt ceiling of its staked ether (stETH) vault this week as it looks to reduce its reliance on centralized stablecoins after Centre, the issuer of USD coin (USDC), blacklisted 38 addresses linked to sanctioned crypto tool Tornado Cash.
More than 34% of all assets locked on USDC are locked on Maker, and the tokens are the single-largest source of collateral that backs DAI, Maker’s native decentralized stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. Approval of the proposal to raise the ceiling to $200 million allows more stETH to be deposited against DAI, reducing USDC’s influence."

https://cointelegraph.com/news/0-3-fall-in-assets-could-render-tether-technically-insolvent-wsj
0.3% fall in assets ‘could render Tether technically insolvent:’ WSJ


https://www.wsj.com/articles/tether-says-audit-is-still-months-away-as-crypto-market-falters-11661568971
Tether Says Audit Is Still Months Away as Crypto Market Falters

I know no more about the reasons for blocking wallets than you do. This information is private.
Tether hasn't had an audit report for many years, and from this audit report we can see that they do business with the US because they hold almost half of their assets in US Treasury.

https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/2xJyKdUKicdRUWpC9buRWR/544a579335ae65ed0e08c162c5a2c5d9/Std_ISAE_3000R_Opinion_30-6-2022_RC134792022BD0303.pdf

one of the blocked addresses
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/take-money-170000-5407489


____

https://cointelegraph.com/news/stablecoin-issuers-hold-more-us-debt-than-berkshire-hathaway-report
Stablecoin issuers hold more US debt than Berkshire Hathaway: Report

"Tether, Circle and other stablecoin firms held $80 billion worth of short-term U.S. government debt as of May 2022, more than owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway."

Are you saying that all these blocked addresses are legit USdT users? I doubt that because I know usdt users with large amount of money and their address never get blocked, I suspect that affected users are into illegal stuffs.

https://tether.to/en/tether-releases-independent-auditor-report-from-top-5-accounting-firm-bdo-reinforcing-its-dedication-to-transparency-and-revealing-another-major-cut-to-commercial-paper-holdings/

"The Management of the Company asserts the following as of 30 June 2022:

The Group’s consolidated total assets amount to at least US$ 66,409,619,424.

The Group’s consolidated total liabilities amount to US$66,218,725,778, of which US$ 66, 204,234,509 relates to digital tokens issued.

The Group’s consolidated assets exceed its consolidated liabilities.

The total gross consolidated contractual redemption value related to all digital tokens issued, including those held by the Group is equal to US$ 66,430,393,253.

The consolidated amount related to digital tokens held by the Group but not in its treasury wallet is equal to US$ 226,158,744."


https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/2xJyKdUKicdRUWpC9buRWR/544a579335ae65ed0e08c162c5a2c5d9/Std_ISAE_3000R_Opinion_30-6-2022_RC134792022BD0303.pdf

Tether management said that such reports would be released monthly.

https://www.theblock.co/post/164272/tether-bdo-italia-partnership-usdt-reserve-attestations
"Stablecoin issuer Tether announced Thursday that it has partnered with BDO Italia, the Italian arm of the world's fifth largest accounting firm, to issue assurance and attestation reports of its reserves.

Tether has previously worked with two Cayman Islands-based accounting firms, Moore Cayman and MHA Cayman. Tether's BDO Italia partnership means it will no longer work with Moore and MHA, the company told The Block. The Block could not immediately reach out to BDO Italia for a comment."

Uncharted | The Responsibility of Trust
https://www.circle.com/blog/the-responsibility-of-trust
"On Monday, August 8 the systems we have in place to comply with applicable law and government regulations worked. Centre, the consortium behind USDC, followed the U.S. Treasury sanctions against Tornado Cash and blocked the related addresses.

Circle also complied with these sanctions and blocked the addresses on our platform, cutting off USDC access from Circle Accounts to and from the Tornado Cash sanctioned addresses.  We expect that nearly every responsible digital asset service provider in the world has also followed suit and blocked access to Tornado Cash addresses.  "

https://www.circle.com/blog/providing-greater-transparency?
Circle continues enhancing our transparency and today we shared a detailed look at the assets backing the USDC reserve.
https://twitter.com/circlepay/status/1547648398374817792?
"The USDC reserve is held solely in cash and 3-month U.S. Treasuries, held in segregated accounts for the benefit of USDC holders, and is entirely separate from Circle’s operations. The USDC reserve is subject to all the same protections under U.S. state and federal law as afforded to other large scale payments innovators entrusted by millions of customers with tens of billions of dollars of customer assets"
0Reports/USDC%20Reserve%20Breakdown_June.pdf

___________________________________

Jul 27 2022
https://tether.to/en/tether-combats-false-information-to-preserve-the-reputation-of-the-cryptocurrency-ecosystem/

Tether Combats False Information to Preserve the Reputation of the Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

"Plain and simple.

Tether’s portfolio holds no Chinese commercial paper and as of today, its total commercial paper exposure has been reduced yet again to a mere ~3.7B (from 30B in July 2021) with plans to further decrease to ~200M by the end of August 2022 and to zero by end of October/early November 2022."

https://tether.to/ru/tether-discloses-celsius-loan-liquidation-process
Tether Discloses Celsius' Loan Liquidation Process
"While Tether’s portfolio does include an investment in Celsius, representing a minimal part of its shareholder’s equity, there is no correlation between this investment and Tether’s own reserves or stability. The Tether loan that was taken out by Celsius was an overcollateralized loan denominated in BTC (130%+), and the decision to liquidate the collateral to cover the loan was a part of the original terms of the agreement between the two entities and reconfirmed in writing before the start of the liquidation event. This process was carried out in a way to minimise as much as possible any impact on the markets and in fact, once the loan was covered, Tether returned the remaining part to Celsius as per its agreement. Celsius position has been liquidated with no losses to Tether."

USDT and USDC are less safe than other crypto projects on Ethereum like DAI and 0xMR because they can blacklist wallets and freeze tokens. Be careful using stablecoins. I'm curious to see if stablecoins will have similar functionality on other chains like the internet computer when they officially launch DeFi.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tether-cto-refutes-stablecoin-fud-as-short-sellers-circle
https://twitter.com/paoloardoino/status/1541418818664292355?
"Tether CTO refutes stablecoin FUD as short-sellers circle
Paolo Ardoino alleged some hedge funds are trying to create pressure “in the billions” to “harm Tether liquidity” so that they can eventually buy back tokens at a much lower price."

There are a lot of rumors on the Internet about the tether scam.
The company had to make an official statement

https://tether.to/en/tether-condemns-false-rumours-about-its-commercial-paper-holdings/
Tether Condemns False Rumours About Its Commercial Paper Holdings

"Tether can report that its current portfolio of commercial paper has since been further reduced to 11 billion (from 20 billion at the end of Q1 2022), and will be 8.4 billion by end June 2022. This will gradually decrease to zero without any incurrences of losses. All commercial papers are expiring and will be rolled into US Treasuries with a short maturity."

Tether Blacklists Ethereum Address Linked to Multichain Hack
The address, containing more than $715,000 of USDT stablecoins, traces back to hackers who stole $3 million from Multichain users.
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/02/11/tether-blacklists-ethereum-address-linked-to-multichain-hack/

https://etherscan.io/address/0xd37448ad7949c4ad8eba5aad1a0afdd3199971d8

Not a new article, but it has a lot of interesting things about the manipulators that control Tether.
Tether Papers: This is exactly who acquired 70% of all USDT ever issued
https://protos.com/tether-papers-crypto-stablecoin-usdt-investigation-analysis/

This market is highly manipulated and driven by printed tokens.

Tether freezes $150 million in USDT
https://shibastore.co/tether-freezes-150-million-in-usdt/
"Tether has added three more Ethereum addresses, holding more $150 million worth of the USDT stablecoin between them, to its blacklist.

As a centralized company, Tether is able to blacklist addresses it believes are involved in crime, money laundering — or for any other reason it chooses.

This is the first time Tether has blacklisted an address in 2022 but it added 312 addresses to the blacklist last year and has added 563 all up since it first did so on Nov. 28, 2017."

Until today I thought that, because Tether had to ask Omni for a hardfork to quarantine stolen USDT after the hack on November 19, 2017, freezing funds would require another Omni hardfork to freeze other addresses, and small fish would be safe here. However they lied in their press release
Probably true for any shady crypto even if not a smartcontract.

https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8450-21
"CFTC Orders Tether and Bitfinex to Pay Fines Totaling $42.5 Million
Tether to Pay $41 million Over Claims that Tether Stablecoin was Fully Backed by US Dollars
Bitfitnex to Pay $1.5 Million for Illegal Transactions While Operating Bitfinex Cryptocurrency Trading Platform and Violation of Prior CFTC Order"

https://tether.to/latest-assurance-opinion-confirms-tether-fully-backed/
Latest Assurance Opinion Once Again Confirms Tether’s Reserves Fully Backed; Tether Continues to Lead The Industry on Transparency.

Paolo Ardoino, Chief Technology Officer at Tether, said:

“As an industry leader, we understand the importance of transparency and accountability. Our most recent assurance opinion from Moore Cayman again confirms Tether is fully backed.  A healthy and conservative portfolio with an emphasis on liquidity continues to fuel our growth and confidence in our innovative offerings.”

https://twitter.com/Tether_to/status/1424703057926008834

https://tether.to/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/tether_assuranceconsolidated_reserves_report_2021-06-30.pdf
______________

https://decrypt.co/78407/can-circle-win-stablecoin-wars
"Can Circle Win the Stablecoin Wars?
Circle wants USDC to be king of the stablecoins, but a lot of things will have to go right for that to happen.


In brief
Circle wants USDC to challenge Tether as the dominant stablecoin.
There are questions over USDC's reserves.
Circle is facing tough legal and business challenges."

__________________
The competition in the stablecoin market is huge.

https://decrypt.co/79257/paxos-stablecoin-pax-dollar

Paxos Rebrands Token as 'Pax Dollar' Amid Stablecoin Wars
"Paxos gives its token a new name, Pax Dollar, as the company tries to challenge larger stablecoin rivals.

In brief
The company's "Paxos Standard" coin will now be known as "Pax Dollar."
The move comes as Paxos tries to challenge stablecoin giants like Tether and Circle."

https://decrypt.co/76875/tether-execs-facing-department-justice-probe-alleged-bank-fraud
Tether Execs Facing Department of Justice Probe For Alleged Bank Fraud

"Tether executives are facing a U.S. Department of Justice probe on potential bank fraud committed during Tether's early days.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating whether or not Tether's executives have committed bank fraud, per Bloomberg.

Federal prosecutors are focusing on Tether's early days, where it is alleged that Tether potentially concealed from banks transactions that were linked to crypto."

https://decrypt.co/76424/circle-unveils-backing-behind-dollar-pegged-cryptocurrency
Circle Reveals Backing Behind Its Dollar-Pegged Cryptocurrency USDC
Today, Circle, the company behind the stablecoin USDC, revealed the reserves that back the dollar-pegged token.

"According to a report written by Circle’s accountants Grant Thornton, which was issued on Friday, Circle held $22,176,182,251 in its account at the time of the report. Grant Thornton accountants verified that the figure equated to exactly one dollar for every USD Coin in circulation.

More than 60% of that number, or $13.4 billion, is held in cash. A quarter of the total reserves are split between Yankee Certificate of Deposits—a type of savings vehicle denominated in dollars—which account for $2.9 billion, and U.S. Treasury securities, which account for $2.7 billion. The remaining 14% is split between commercial paper and corporate bonds.
"
https://www.centre.io/hubfs/pdfs/attestation/Grant-Thorton_circle_usdc_reserves_07162021.pdf

Excellent thread and all this puts the focus back on why decentralized stable coins are much better than centralized coins. I guess people feel that because they are not involved in any wrongdoing so their coins should not be blocked but then like you mentioned, if coins are blocked you can't do anything honestly and the reason isn't given either.

I personally feel this is a selective scam, just like some crypto casinos are operating. They will let small players play but every once in a while they will scam a whale and there is literally nothing you can do because there's no proof or if even there's proof, how would you make your claim? Not every casino cares or solves accusations made at this forum.

https://muellerberndt.medium.com/is-tether-a-black-swan-51095720b01c
Is Tether a Black Swan?

"In this article I attempt to address the following questions:
How would a loss of confidence in Tether play out in the short term?
Who would get most rekt if a Tether-related crash happens?
Would a Tether confidence crisis be a black swan event* that would severely impact the market?"

Do we have to take their word for it?
Then where are these hackers or money launderers?
Where are the links to criminal cases?
If you have more detailed information, please share it.
I receive information about blocking accounts from third-party services and cannot find links on the official website.

It's not just tether, Exchanges (centralized) and gambling sites are doing this for years. There are going to be a clear distinct branches of cryptocurrency, one being centrally controlled and another being decentralized, Decentralized coins and exchanges would be marginalized by the government so much that it would be hard to cash in and out from them in the near future. But the value would still be determined by the market.

Interesting topic.
Now, this is for tether, ok? Imagine when those very power will be used on future CBDCs.
Do you get the picture?
If CDBCs will take over the old money world our wealth will be wiped out with the click of a button.
Are we ready for that? I mean, are we ready to keep our financial freedom as hard as we can?
We got fooled by the very system we were trying to fight:  we started looking for easy profits guided by greed and we completely lost track of the big picture.
Bitcoin was here to liberate us and now it could be turned into our worst nightmare.
Makes sense?

Well, tether is likely not a decentralized cryptocurrency otherwise censorship wouldn't be possible without community or public participation.

A truely decentralized cryptocurrency may only allow censorship if a transaction has been publicly proven to dangerous/immoral. It has to be done publicly rather than in secret, and the reason for the censorship clearly stated and visible to the public. Besides, there has to be list of rules that guide this to prevent abuse.

I'm not sure we have truely decentralized cryptocurrency that censors transactions the right way yet, otherwise  no one will complain too much because it will be fair system.

Honestly I don't keep criminals around so I've never heard about usdt freeze alarm from any of my friends or families so I'm 100% sure that those freezed funds are from illegal activities or scam shits, if you don't like the whole idea just move on to DAI stable coin

Or you can use XHV and xUSD instead

This have been discussed about a lot in the forum. It's their coin with their rules, if you are not okay with it, you shouldn't use.
While the instances of user wallet being blocked with tokens in their is a rare occurrence, even in USDT, they are done for the interest of law enforcement agencies. Specially the US law enforcement. They need to do that for them to be doing business in US. Tether have released statement claiming those frozen accounts are of hackers or money launderers.

https://decrypt.co/70732/tether-reveals-reserves-breakdown-for-the-first-time-since-2014

Tether Reveals Reserves Breakdown For The First Time Since 2014
The stablecoin issuer has revealed that nearly 76% of its reserves were held in cash and cash equivalents as of March 2021.
Scott Chipolina(c)
May 13, 2021

Stablecoin issuer Tether (USDT) has revealed a breakdown of its reserves for the first time since 2014, according to The Block.
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/104780/tether-usdt-reserves-breakdown-first-time-since-launch

Update links for statistics

USDC - Number of Banned Addresses: 1 Banned Addresses
https://duneanalytics.com/phabc/usdc-banned-addresses

USDT - Number of Banned Addresses: 390 Banned Addresses
https://duneanalytics.com/phabc/usdt---banned-addresses

The reasons why the funds were banned are not reported.
Make the right conclusions in which stablecoins to stake your funds.

Stable coins are always centralised. Blocking is done by by owner/developer. This also beside it is centralised also makes stable coins not permisionless. Since you need permission from owner/developler if you can or not use it

Stable coins are not cryptocurrencies!!!!

Interesting.
Who is doing the blocking (if they were really blocked)? Did the owner/owners commit any crime? And was the crime clearly stated for the public to see? Are the stablecoins with such block feature decentralized or centralized? If decentralized, is the blocking done via network consensus?  No true decentralized stablecoin/crypto should be blockable without proper, transparent and community consensus. So, I would avoid any so called decentralized stablecoin that can be blocked without proper consensus.  Decentralized coins should be censorship resistant and transparent. The only coins that could be frozen/blocked are those that have been used for serious crimes or owned by serious proven criminals.

it just came out of thin air.
free money.
free money is good it can pump bitcoin higher 👍💪🐠🐡🐟🐙🥓🌮🌍

Capitalization of USDT - $8,924,973,068
https://wallet.tether.to/transparency

If you carefully examine their site, you will not find information about the audit of this company.

You can read only this phrase: "All tethers are backed 100% by Tether's reserves."  
https://wallet.tether.to/

The number of tokens for the past year and a half has doubled.



How do decent companies work?

Capitalization of  USD Coin (USDC)- $ 703 411 562
https://www.circle.com/

An audit is conducted every month by a well-known global company - Grant Thornton LLP
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Thornton_LLP
https://www.circle.com/blog

https://www.circle.com/blog/usdc-reserve-attestation-report-from-grant-thornton-llp-march-2020
https://www.circle.com/blog/usdc-reserve-attestation-report-from-grant-thornton-llp-feb-2020
https://www.circle.com/blog/usdc-reserve-attestation-report-from-grant-thornton-llp-january-2020


https://www.centre.io/usdc-transparency


Capitalization TUSD(TrueUSD)- $ 136 911 758
https://www.trusttoken.com

An audit is conducted every month by a well-known global company - armanino LLP

https://www.armaninollp.com/

Real-time report
https://real-time-attest.trustexplorer.io/token/TrueUSD


The most honest and secure stablecoin
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/single-collateral-dai/

Real-time statistics
https://makerburn.com/#/

Hi, I'm interested in your opinion.
links to interesting articles

https://www.hib.ru/tether-blokiruet-usdt/
https://medium.com/human-rights-foundation-hrf/privacy-and-cryptocurrency-part-iv-stablecoins-for-human-rights-blacklists-and-traceability-6d74ee17c25d

Tether blocks USDT. Here is a real example of a loss of $ 301’000 due to USDT blocking.

Trader withdrew $ 300,900 USDT from Binance exchange to ETH address  0xB1fa690155821bF9191d609593B556048Aca517c
Trader transferred $ 300,901.099742 USDT to new ETH address 0x5441bfcDA141759eaaE9737a28Cb2F9fd43e8869

https://etherscan.io/address/0xb1fa690155821bf9191d609593b556048aca517c#tokentxns


From the ETH address 0x5441bfcDA141759eaaE9737a28Cb2F9fd43e8869 the trader transferred $ 200,600 USDT to the address 0x087A39eCD3E12db24b76025efAF077a2fd6E44C2
https://etherscan.io/address/0x087a39ecd3e12db24b76025efaf077a2fd6e44c2#tokentxns

$ 100 546.1 USDT Blocked at Address 0x5441bfcda141759eaae9737a28cb2f9fd43e8869
https://etherscan.io/address/0x5441bfcda141759eaae9737a28cb2f9fd43e8869



$ 201 058,07 USDT Blocked at Address 0x087A39eCD3E12db24b76025efAF077a2fd6E44C2
https://etherscan.io/address/0x087a39ecd3e12db24b76025efaf077a2fd6e44c2



How to check the USDT Block?

1.Follow the link
https://etherscan.io/token/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7?a=0x087a39ecd3e12db24b76025efaf077a2fd6e44c2#readContract

2. In the field No. 18(isBlackListed) enter the address and press Query

We look at the result, true - the address in the blacklist, fals- clean. If the address is in the black list, then the USDT on it is frozen and it is no longer possible to send them anywhere.



Tether ( https://tether.to/ ) may block your USDT  at any time.

Wow, right?
And no one will explain to you the reasons for blocking

But this is only the beginning, I began to study this issue in more detail and found a lot of useful information.



Resource: https://medium.com/human-rights-foundation-hrf/privacy-and-cryptocurrency-part-iv-stablecoins-for-human-rights-blacklists-and-traceability-6d74ee17c25d

Almost all stablecoins can be blocked.
At the moment, only DAI does not have a blocking function and USDT-Liquid (but did not find who uses it).


KYT «Know Your Transaction»,
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chainalysis-provides-anti-money-laundering-compliance-solution-for-tether-301003370.html

This article is not limited to stable coins. Any ETH smartcontract may include a token blocking function and any funds may be blocked.

Knowledge is the best weapon!

USDC banned
https://www.theblock.co/data/decentralized-finance/stablecoins/usdc-banned-addresses-on-ethereum