The cryptocurrency community’s good citizen USDT Tether voluntarily froze 225 million this time

0 1 Active and voluntary Tether?

According to Wu Blockchain, Tether, the issuer of USDT , has proactively and voluntarily frozen approximately 225 million USDT after a cooperative investigation with OKX and DOJ. These tokens were stored in a self-hosted wallet related to an international human trafficking group in Southeast Asia, which was responsible for a global pig-killing scam.

This is the largest USDT freeze in history.

Everyone has the responsibility to combat illegal crimes. So what is even more striking is that this is an "active and voluntary" action by USDT.

The fewer words, the bigger the matter.

On the one hand, the company's asset reserves are not transparent, and on the other hand, as the issuer, it can remotely freeze the USDT in your wallet.

It is no exaggeration to say that USDT, which is disguised as a virtual currency, is completely anti-cryptocurrency.

What is anti-cryptocurrency? Let's first think about why we want to own virtual currencies like BTC? In addition to long-term investments that are expected to appreciate by $100,000, a very important reason why people like Bitcoin is that cryptocurrencies like BTC do not require trust in any third party. As long as you have your private key, you can own your digital assets. As long as you have your private key, you can transfer your digital assets without relying on any third party.

This is a very important reason why virtual currency exists.

0 2Why do we need virtual currency?

In virtual currencies like USDT, this kind of complete ownership does not exist. Even if it seems that you can "freely" control your USDT in daily use, I'm sorry, the ultimate hand of God still lies in the commercial company Tether, the issuer of USDT.

According to market data analysis, USDT Tether's market share is as high as 63.36%, which is far ahead.

As a global company, Tether has established an on-chain blacklist mechanism to fulfill its anti-money laundering compliance obligations and has established close and friendly cooperative relations with law enforcement agencies around the world. Whenever law enforcement agencies request that funds be involved in fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing and other activities, it will restrict the relevant addresses.

The principle of "freezing" is that USDT, as a product of smart contract programming, can restrict EOA's management authority over the token through code. When an address is "AddedBlackList" by the centralized Tether company, it will no longer be able to transfer the USDT tokens in the address.

As of March 2023, Tether has blacklisted 846 addresses in the Ethereum network, and more than 449 million USDT have been frozen.

These remote freezes may come from the hands of judicial authorities in any country or region in the world, but in theory they can also come from centralized "active and voluntary" evil needs.

Therefore, for friends who truly recognize the value of virtual currency and really want to control their own virtual currency assets, things like USDT Tether can be used as a middleman, but it is really not recommended to keep it.