992 wallets flagged, 986 frozen since July 2026

An address that gets blacklisted by Tether does not lose its USDT from the ledger. The balance stays exactly where it was; what disappears is the address's ability to send it anywhere. That follows from how the token itself works: an ERC-20 or TRC-20 balance is one number per address, added to with each incoming transfer and never split into a frozen slice and a free slice inside the record itself.

TrustSniffer's freeze tracker has followed this process since 2026-07-14, current as of 2026-10-08. We flagged 992 wallets as freeze targets before the freeze landed, using the proposals Tether itself puts forward on-chain. Of those, 990 now have a known outcome, two are still pending, and 986 were frozen: a 99.6% hit rate. We call the time between our flag and the freeze executing the head start. Across both networks counted together, the typical head start is 10 minutes, and nine in ten freezes land within 3.2 hours of our flag. The medians for each network are further down. Between them, the wallets we flagged held $421.8 million at the moment the freeze landed.

TRON freezes in minutes, Ethereum takes longer

The two networks we track do not behave the same way once a freeze proposal goes up.

  • TRON: 901 of the wallets we flagged were frozen here, with a median head start of 5 minutes between our flag and the freeze.
  • Ethereum: 81 wallets were frozen here, with a median head start of 33 minutes.

Add the 4 wallets frozen as the twin of a key already blacklisted on the other chain (covered below) and the three groups account for all 986 freezes in our count: 901 plus 81 plus 4.

Four wallets frozen through a twin key on another chain

Four of the wallets in our count were not frozen because of anything that address did on its own chain. They share a private key with an address Tether had already blacklisted on a different network, so once that first key was frozen, the twin it controls elsewhere was frozen too.

The balance an explorer shows you does not say if it is frozen

If USDT lands in a wallet you were not expecting, or you are deciding whether to release a trade against a deposit, the balance on its own tells you nothing about whether the address is blacklisted. Our wallet checker tells you whether we have flagged the address. Two explorer checks tell you whether the token is Tether's real USDT and where it came from.

Our wallet checker runs the address against the wallets we have already assessed and tells you whether it matches one we have flagged. A clean result means the USDT involved comes from the real contract and the address is not one we have recorded against a freeze. It does not tell you whether the balance will ever move again. If the contract does not match, or the explorer shows transfers you cannot explain, hold the trade until you get an explanation.

  • Confirm the contract. Tether's USDT runs from TR7NHqjeKQxGTCi8q8ZY4pL8otSzgjLj6t on TRON and from 0xdAC17F958D2ee523a2206206994597C13D831ec7 on Ethereum. A token with the same name from any other contract is not Tether's USDT.
  • Look the address up on the matching explorer: Tronscan for a TRON address, Etherscan for an Ethereum one. Searching the address or the transaction hash shows the sender, the recipient, the token contract, the amount and the time of each transfer.

Built from Tether's proposals, with one gap we do not fill

Our flags come from Tether's own multisig proposals, the step that happens before a freeze executes. That is how we can flag an address before the freeze. Our tracker lists a pending proposal without the address or the exact amount until the freeze goes through, so our public record never gives a holder enough notice to move funds first.

What we do not have is a record of what happens to a balance after it is frozen. Whether a specific frozen amount is later released, or dealt with some other way, is outside what a freeze proposal tells us; our data stops at whether the freeze landed and how long the warning was. If you want to check a specific address against what we have flagged so far, the live USDT freeze tracker lists every wallet in this count.

Related reads: can USDT be frozen explains the on-chain blacklist itself, USDT sent to a frozen address covers a transfer that lands after the freeze, and anyone asking for a fee to release a frozen balance is running the pay-to-unfreeze USDT scam.

Frequently asked questions

What happens to USDT after Tether freezes the address?

The balance stays on the chain exactly where it was. What the address loses is the ability to send it anywhere. Whether a frozen amount is later released, or dealt with some other way, is outside what our tracker records: our data stops at whether the freeze landed and how long the warning was.

How fast does a USDT freeze land after Tether proposes it?

Across both networks we track, the typical head start between our flag and the freeze executing is 10 minutes, and nine in ten freezes land within 3.2 hours. On TRON the median head start is 5 minutes. On Ethereum it is 33 minutes.

Can an explorer balance tell me if a USDT address is frozen?

No. The balance on its own says nothing about whether the address is blacklisted. Our wallet checker tells you whether the address matches one we have flagged, and Tronscan or Etherscan shows whether the token comes from Tether's real contract and where each transfer came from.

How accurate is TrustSniffer's USDT freeze tracker?

Since 2026-07-14 we flagged 992 wallets before a freeze landed, using Tether's own multisig proposals. Of the 990 with a known outcome, 986 were frozen, a 99.6% hit rate. Two are still pending.