# Tether Froze $1.45M in USDT Across Four THORChain Vaults

By Simon Yoon

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/technology/29842
Published: 2026-10-11T15:03:44.000Z
Updated: 2026-10-11T15:03:44.000Z
Section: Technology

> The Oct. 9 restriction halted TRON trading and left about $363,000 in payouts queued before the addresses appeared unfrozen.

Tether temporarily blacklisted four of THORChain’s six TRON vaults holding about $1.45 million in USDT, disrupting cross-chain trading and related operations on Oct. 9.

The restriction halted trading on THORChain’s TRON route, along with transaction signing and liquidity-provider activity. About $363,000 in payouts entered a queue while the vault addresses were restricted.

The addresses later appeared unfrozen at about 11:35 a.m. ET (15:35 UTC), and THORChain technical co-founder Chad Barraford said trading was expected to resume.

The incident affected a key operational layer of the cross-chain protocol because its TRON vaults held USDT directly. THORChain’s safety controls allow node operators to pause an individual chain or the entire protocol, but they do not selectively remove individual swaps.

The disruption therefore came from Tether’s address-level controls rather than a protocol-wide safety shutdown.