Tether Says It Froze Iran Crypto Addresses Four Weeks Before OFAC and NBCTF Designations

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino pushed back against a Senate report, saying the company froze Iran crypto addresses an average of four weeks before official designations by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF). He also said Tether’s actions preceded Chainalysis labels by an average of 99%. For high-risk payment and crypto teams, the key point is not the rhetoric — it’s the timing, the scope, and the fact that Tether is defending its enforcement process in public.

1. Ardoino said Tether froze Iran-linked crypto addresses an average of four weeks before OFAC and NBCTF designations. In an X post, he challenged Senator Richard Blumenthal’s interpretation of the Senate findings and said Tether froze reported addresses, not just later-designated ones.
2. He attributed a 94% decline in Iran-linked stablecoin volumes to those freezes and the related official actions. Tether, however, has not published the measurement period, baseline, address set, or asset scope behind that figure, so the number is part of the dispute rather than a fully disclosed methodology.
3. Ardoino’s separate 99% figure refers to the timing of Tether’s action relative to Chainalysis labels. So there are two different comparisons in play here: one against sanctions designations, another against blockchain analytics tagging. Mixing them up would do wonders for confusion and very little for compliance.
4. The Senate report, Tethered to Terrorism, was published on September 28 by Democratic staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It examined 846 wallets sanctioned or targeted for seizure over Iran-related activity, which is the backdrop for Tether’s response.