Tether Says Iran-Linked Stablecoin Volumes Fell 94% as It Rebuts Senate Report

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said on Monday that the company's address freezes have driven a 94% decline in Iran-linked stablecoin volumes, in a post on X rebutting a Senate report that placed USDT at the centre of Iran's shadow banking network.

Ardoino wrote that Senator Richard Blumenthal's "analysis" of Tether's sanctions report "misses that, since 2023, Tether froze on average 4 weeks prior to OFAC & NBCTF official sanction designation and in 99% of these transactions, Tether froze the reported addresses before Chainalysis labelled them." Tether has not published the data behind the 94% figure or said what period the decline covers, what baseline it is measured against, or whether it counts USDT alone or all stablecoins, so the number cannot be independently checked.

The report, Tethered to Terrorism, was published on September 28 by Democratic staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It analysed 846 wallets sanctioned or targeted for seizure over ties to Iran and its proxies between June 2021 and August 2026, and found that 84% transacted exclusively or nearly exclusively in USDT. Blumenthal, the subcommittee's ranking member, referred the findings to the Treasury and the Justice Department.

One case in the report sits awkwardly with the four-week claim. Israel's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing designated 39 wallets tied to Hezbollah financier Tawfiq Muhammad Sa'id Al-Law in June 2023. Tether froze five of them and left the other 34 open until March 2024, shortly before OFAC sanctioned Al-Law, and more than $34.6 million in USDT left those wallets in the interim. The report credits Tether with responding to designations "in some instances" since late 2023 but calls the effort "uneven and inconsistent."

Tether's own disclosure, released the same day as the report, said it had supported freezes of nearly $550 million in Iran-linked USDT this year. That includes more than $344 million across two addresses in April, which TRM Labs identified as the first Central Bank of Iran wallets designated by OFAC, and more than $130 million across four wallets in July. The release does not itemise the remaining $76 million or so.

TRM puts Iranian crypto volume at about $11.4 billion in 2024 and $10 billion in 2025, a fall of roughly 12% in the wider market. A steep drop in USDT activity is consistent with that only if much of the flow moved to assets or venues that Tether cannot freeze.

USDT has a market capitalisation of about $183 billion, according to CoinGecko. The next test is whether the Treasury or the Justice Department acts on Blumenthal's referral. As of the report's publication, Tether had confirmed receipt of the subcommittee's June letter without responding to it.