Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, announced yesterday (9) that it will further cooperate with the US government regulatory agency OFAC. It has initiated a voluntary wallet freezing policy and has already proactively frozen a batch of suspicious wallets, one of which is associated with the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group.
In order to combat suspicious transactions, Tether voluntarily froze 41 wallets related to the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) specially designated nationals list (SDN) on Saturday (9). This action is part of Tether’s efforts to create a safe and reliable environment for global users. In an official blog post, Tether explained the action and declared its intention to cooperate more closely with US government agencies, announcing the launch of this new “voluntary” wallet freezing policy.
Associated with Lazarus Group, the frozen wallets have been identified to have used the mixer Tornado Cash in the past six months. One wallet is even linked to the $625 million Ronin Bridge attack, which has been attributed to the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group by the US Department of the Treasury.
According to the blog post, Tether will extend the sanctions measures imposed on wallets on its own platform to the secondary market. This measure is a proactive effort to protect the use of stablecoins and to cooperate more closely with global regulatory and law enforcement agencies.
To comply with this policy, Tether has taken additional precautionary measures, including freezing wallets that were added to the SDN list before the freezing. The main purpose of this approach is to actively prevent any possible abuse of Tether tokens and enhance security measures. Tether’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino, commented on this:
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Lazarus Group
Paolo Ardoino
Tether
USDT
stablecoin
