BlocksInform
Tether added three other Ethereum addresses, holding more than $150 million in stablecoin USDT between them, to its blacklist.
As a centralized company, Tether is in a position to blacklist addresses that she believes are involved in crime, money laundering or any other reason she chooses.
This is the first time tether has blacklisted an address in 2022 but it added 312 addresses to the blacklist last year and has added 563 all up since it first did so on nov. 28, 2017.
Tether did not reveal why the three new addresses were blacklisted, but he used his authority to blacklist addresses involved in cyberattacks and police investigations. following the KUCOIN hack in sep. 2020, tether froze about $35 million usdt to prevent hackers from capitalizing on their theft.
there may also be “precautionary reasons” for the blacklisting, such as being associated with scams, which arcane asset's cio eric wall noted as a reason for a separate tether freeze in 2020.
Concerns about lack of decentralization may be a factor in the adoption of the terrausd (ust) stablecoin from algo stablecoin blockchain terra. It currently has the fourth highest market capitalization of $10.6 billion. The market cap of the decentralized challenger is still pale compared to usdt however, which is the fourth largest crypto overall with a market cap of $78.5 billion.
related: crypto regulation concerns make decentralized stablecoins attractive to defi investors
Do Kwon, founder of Terra, tweeted in reply to the news of Tether's shares that there was no way to blacklist UST addresses.
