Ardoino Says Tether Actions Cut Iran-Linked Stablecoin Volume by 94%

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said Monday, Oct. 19, that the company’s actions led Iran-linked stablecoin volumes to decline 94%. He did not specify the period measured, the starting volume or which wallets were included in the calculation.

That leaves the claim difficult to compare with a Democratic review of Iran-linked wallets. Investigators on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations examined 846 unique wallets sanctioned or targeted for seizure over links to Iran and its regional proxies.

They found that 84% had transacted exclusively or nearly exclusively in Tether USD₮ (USDT), the company’s dollar-pegged stablecoin. That figure describes wallet use within a selected group; Ardoino’s 94% figure describes a claimed change in stablecoin volume. The percentages measure different things and do not confirm or disprove each other.

Ardoino also claimed that since 2023, Tether froze addresses an average of four weeks before formal designations by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF).

Democratic investigators said that before 2024, Tether had not comprehensively and consistently frozen wallets designated by counterterrorism agencies. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the subcommittee’s ranking member, called on the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Justice to investigate Tether’s sanctions and anti-money-laundering practices.

Tether said actions involving USDT resulted in approximately $550 million in Iran-linked assets being frozen during 2026. The company cited more than $344 million across two addresses in April, when it supported the U.S. government’s freeze, and more than $130 million across four wallets in July. Tether said the two April addresses were later added to the Central Bank of Iran’s sanctions entry.