Tether has frozen roughly 30 times more value than Circle over the past three years, highlighting sharply different enforcement styles between the two largest stablecoin issuers, new AMLBOT data shows.
Between 2023 and 2025 Tether blacklisted about $3.3 billion worth of tokens across 7,268 addresses, while Circle froze roughly $109 million across 372 addresses. More than 2,800 of Tether’s blacklists were carried out in coordination with U.S. law enforcement and targeted funds tied to scams and other criminal activity, AMLBOT reported.
Network distribution differs too. Over 53% of Tether’s frozen tokens were on the Tron network, and about $1.54 billion in Tether on the Ethereum network is currently held in banned wallets. Circle’s Ethereum-related freezes closely track its totals, with AMLBOT showing $109.25 million held in banned wallets.
The two issuers’ policies explain much of the gap. Tether operates a “freeze, burn and reissue” mechanism that enables it to invalidate compromised tokens and reissue replacements under controlled conditions, allowing more aggressive and large‑scale intervention. Circle, by contrast, freezes assets only under explicit court orders or regulatory directives and does not burn or reissue tokens after freezing—an approach grounded in legal formality and restraint.
The AMLBOT figures underscore how issuer policy, jurisdictional cooperation and enforcement tools shape the on‑chain behavior of stablecoins in investigations or sanctions scenarios. For market participants, the divergence raises questions about counterparty risk, recoverability of seized funds and how centralized controls interact with blockchain transparency.
Data source: AMLBOT.
Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news
