Tether Freezes 39.27 Million USDT in New Coin Guarantee
According to on-chain security agency MistTrack, Tether froze 10 addresses on the Tron network a few hours ago, involving approximately 39.27 million USDT. These addresses are related to New Coin Guarantee.
New Coin Guarantee was previously an active collateral trading service provider on the Telegram platform. Such collateral platforms typically provide matching and fund custody services for off-exchange transactions involving telecom fraud, cross-border gambling, and other gray or even illegal funds, making them a key focus of anti-money laundering regulation in the cryptocurrency sector.
This freeze is not Tether's first action against similar platforms; the company has previously frozen funds related to Huione Guarantee, which was reported to have long provided settlement services for illegal activities in Southeast Asia. The freeze against New Coin Guarantee is seen as another strike by Tether against illegal custody platforms on Telegram, following its actions against Huione Guarantee.
From an operational perspective, Tether, as the issuer of USDT, has the technical capability to freeze specific address assets through a blacklist function at the smart contract level. This concentrated freeze of approximately 39.27 million dollars across 10 addresses is not the largest in scale but reflects Tether's ongoing investment in compliance review and on-chain monitoring mechanisms.
Such collateral trading platforms typically operate through encrypted communication software like Telegram, providing credit endorsement and fund custody for buyers and sellers (including those involved in fraudulent funds and black market fund transfers), with the trading process evading traditional exchanges' KYC and anti-money laundering review systems. They are currently one of the important channels for cashing out funds in the telecom fraud industry chain.
From a fund flow perspective, Tether's continued freezing of addresses related to fraud and black market funds directly cuts off the channels for such illegal funds to be transferred and cashed out across borders using USDT, compressing the liquidity space of gray collateral platforms. On the other hand, it is also Tether's proactive measure to strengthen its compliance image in response to increasing global regulatory pressures and concerns from various regulatory agencies regarding the money laundering risks of stablecoins. In the long run, this helps solidify USDT's compliant status as a mainstream stablecoin but may also prompt some illegal funds to shift towards other cryptocurrencies or on-chain tools with weaker regulation and higher decentralization.
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Tether has been increasingly proactive in freezing addresses related to fraud and money laundering in recent years. The company has previously cooperated with law enforcement agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice and Interpol to freeze large amounts of USDT assets involved in "pig-butchering" investment scams, North Korean hacker organizations, and Southeast Asian telecom fraud parks. The concentrated freeze action against Huione Guarantee and several other Telegram collateral platforms in 2024 is a representative case of previous crackdowns.
The funding path for such collateral platforms typically involves converting fraud or black market proceeds into USDT through over-the-counter trading, and then completing the transfer and laundering of funds between buyers and sellers through the collateral platform's credit endorsement, ultimately flowing into legitimate exchanges or other on-chain assets for cashing out. Tether's freeze effectively cuts off this critical link in the funding path, preventing funds already held in related addresses from being further transferred or withdrawn.
This is similar to the U.S. Treasury's sanctions against North Korean hacker-related wallet addresses in 2024, where Tether subsequently cooperated to freeze related assets. It also aligns closely with the path of Huione Guarantee, which was exposed and faced joint crackdowns. New Coin Guarantee is seen as one of the alternative platforms that absorbed some funds and users after the crackdown on Huione Guarantee. Currently, the Telegram collateral trading ecosystem is in a cat-and-mouse game stage, where new alternatives continuously emerge after the top platforms are targeted.
This essentially reflects an industry chain reconstruction driven by regulatory changes—stablecoin issuers, as centralized control nodes of on-chain assets, are becoming key levers in combating the funding chains of black and gray markets in the cryptocurrency field. The core mechanism is that while blockchain transactions themselves are irreversible, the blacklist authority retained by mainstream stablecoin issuers allows for the traditional financial system's risk control capability of "assets being traceably frozen" to be partially embedded in the cryptocurrency asset system, which in turn forces illegal funds to continuously migrate towards assets or platforms with higher decentralization and a lack of centralized freezing capabilities.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- The more centralized the stablecoin, the fewer hiding places there are for black market funds.
- Taking down one collateral platform only forces funds to change their guise and regroup.
- On-chain irreversibility exists, but the issuer's blacklist always prevails.