UDST wallets frozen by Israel Ministry of Defense

Did you know that the stablecoins funds such as USDC and USDT can be frozen? Well, now that you know this, the Israel’s Ministry of Defense has ordered the seizure of 187 crypto wallets allegedly linked to Iran’s IRGC, saying they processed over $1.5B in USDT and currently hold about $1.5M.

Elliptic, a blockchain company has unable been able to confirm the wallets belong to the IRGC, noting some may be controlled by crypto service providers. There’s no public on-chain proof tying those 187 wallets directly to the IRGC—Israel’s Defense Ministry says they’re convinced but doesn’t share how. Elliptic, after a forensic look, won’t confirm the link, stressing some wallets could just be run by crypto services moving funds for many users.

If Israel’s data came from past hacks or intelligence, it’s not in the docs, and with $1.5B in transactions but only $1.5M left, attribution gets messier. Elliptic’s point: it’s easy to mislabel pooled service wallets, so not every dollar here is IRGC-related.

However, if Tether, the firm behind UDST, actually blacklists the addresses its big wakeup call to only hold bitcoin. So, yes it is an interesting move, but the lack of confirmation from Elliptic raises questions about the true ownership of those wallets.