Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says his company’s address freezes have cut Iran-linked stablecoin transaction volumes by 94% since 2023.
The timing matters. A Senate report recently named Tether’s USDT as the stablecoin of choice for sanctioned Iran-linked wallets, and Ardoino’s response amounts to this: yes, they used our token, and we are the reason they are using it a lot less.
What Tether is claiming
Ardoino made the announcement on October 19, 2026. He framed the drop as the result of a proactive compliance strategy, not a reactive one.
His central argument concerns timing. According to Ardoino, Tether froze relevant addresses an average of four weeks before official sanctions arrived from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Israel’s NBCTF.
The company also put a dollar figure on its efforts. Tether disclosed that it blocked approximately $550 million in USDT linked to Iran over the course of 2026.
Most of that came in two large batches. Freezes in April and July together accounted for over $470 million of the total.
Third-party data points in the same direction. Figures from TRM Labs show USDT’s share of on-chain volume in Iran-attributed wallets fell from 67% in 2025 to 14% in August 2026.
The Senate report that set this off
Ardoino’s comments were a response to a Senate report published on September 28, 2026. The findings were presented by Senator Richard Blumenthal.
The report analyzed 846 sanctioned wallets with Iranian links. Of those, 84% predominantly used Tether’s USDT.
That statistic did not sit quietly. The findings prompted calls for investigations into whether Tether has complied with sanctions and anti-money laundering rules.
Ardoino’s answer reframes the same facts. If USDT was the most-used token among these wallets, he argues, Tether was also the party best positioned to shut that activity down, and it did.
Why the ability to freeze matters
Think of USDT less like cash and more like a gift card the issuer can deactivate. Once Tether flags an address, the tokens sitting in it stop moving.
The four-week lead time is Ardoino’s strongest card. A company that waits for OFAC to publish a list is following the rules. A company that acts before the list exists is making its own calls about who looks suspicious.
What this means for Tether and stablecoins
For Tether, the immediate stakes are regulatory. The calls for investigation that followed Blumenthal’s report have not gone away simply because Ardoino published a strong number.
A 94% decline is a compelling headline figure, but it is Tether’s own claim about its own performance. Investigators will likely want to see how the figure was calculated, which wallets were counted, and what baseline from 2023 it measures against.
The TRM Labs data helps Tether’s case because it comes from an outside firm. Still, if USDT’s share dropped from 67% to 14%, the open question is where the remaining activity went, and the figures here do not answer it.
Tether’s strategy here is clear. Rather than dispute the Senate’s finding that USDT dominated sanctioned Iran-linked wallets, it is pointing to the freezes, the dollar totals, and the four-week lead as evidence that its controls work.
Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.