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Report · Q3 2026

Stablecoin Freeze Report Q3 2026

Tether, Circle and Paxos blacklisted addresses 3,752 times across 9 chains between July and September, the most of any quarter we have recorded.

October 31, 2026Data: 1 Jul to 30 Sep 20267 min read

Freeze events, Q3 20263,752Week of 1 Jul: 206 / 1,309 / 0Week of 6 Jul: 70 / 8 / 0Week of 13 Jul: 72 / 100 / 6Week of 20 Jul: 79 / 72 / 0Week of 27 Jul: 63 / 21 / 0Week of 3 Aug: 58 / 72 / 0Week of 10 Aug: 85 / 1 / 0Week of 17 Aug: 62 / 1 / 4Week of 24 Aug: 73 / 223 / 4Week of 31 Aug: 96 / 0 / 0Week of 7 Sep: 173 / 472 / 40Week of 14 Sep: 114 / 1 / 0Week of 21 Sep: 130 / 4 / 0Week of 28 Sep: 66 / 67 / 0Weekly, by issuer: Tether, Circle, PaxosHighest quarter in our ledger
Where the money is93%of the dollars frozen this quarter sat on TRON, which carried only 36% of the events.Chains ↓One second$128.8Min USDT frozen across 3 TRON addresses at 21:02:57 UTC on 14 Jul.Largest freezes ↓One day1,309Circle blacklist events on 1 Jul: the same 131 addresses on every USDC and EURC contract.Circle's sweep ↓

Between July and September 2026, Tether, Circle and Paxos blacklisted addresses 3,752 times across 9 chains. Tether froze $556.9M in USDT, almost all of it on TRON, and destroyed another $57.2M. Circle ran the quarter's largest coordinated action: on 1 July it blacklisted the same 131 addresses on every USDC and EURC contract it touched, 9 contracts on 6 chains, in a single afternoon.

Every figure comes from the issuers' own contract events, read directly from each chain and recorded in our Stablecoin Freeze Ledger. The aggregated dataset is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; it is linked at the end.

Issuers

Who froze what

Tether and Circle work differently. Tether freezes one address at a time, usually with money in it. Circle blacklists the same address on every chain where it issues, often before any funds arrive.

Events by issuer and actionTetherCirclePaxos
TokenActionEventsAddressesUSD
Circle USDCfreeze1,628420≥ $7.8M
Tether USDTfreeze1,3471,342$556.9M
Circle EURCfreeze7232390
Tether USDTdestroy9797$57.2M
Paxos USDP · USDGfreeze54540
Tether USDTunfreeze5151$19.0M
Circle USDCunfreeze33$0.1M
EURC, USDP and USDG addresses held nothing when frozen: 400 of the EURC addresses, re-checked on Ethereum on 29 October, all hold 0 EURC. The USDC figure is a lower bound because some balances could not be read. 54 addresses were released during the quarter.
Timeline

Week by week

Tether's pace is steady, between 58 and 206 freezes a week. Circle's arrives in bursts: the first week of July and the second week of September hold most of its quarter.

Freeze events per weekTetherCirclePaxos
05001,0001,5002,0001 Jul: Tether 206, Circle 1,309, Paxos 0, total 1,5151 Jul6 Jul: Tether 70, Circle 8, Paxos 0, total 787813 Jul: Tether 72, Circle 100, Paxos 6, total 17817813 Jul20 Jul: Tether 79, Circle 72, Paxos 0, total 15115127 Jul: Tether 63, Circle 21, Paxos 0, total 848427 Jul3 Aug: Tether 58, Circle 72, Paxos 0, total 13013010 Aug: Tether 85, Circle 1, Paxos 0, total 868610 Aug17 Aug: Tether 62, Circle 1, Paxos 4, total 676724 Aug: Tether 73, Circle 223, Paxos 4, total 30030024 Aug31 Aug: Tether 96, Circle 0, Paxos 0, total 96967 Sep: Tether 173, Circle 472, Paxos 40, total 6857 Sep14 Sep: Tether 114, Circle 1, Paxos 0, total 11511521 Sep: Tether 130, Circle 4, Paxos 0, total 13413421 Sep28 Sep: Tether 66, Circle 67, Paxos 0, total 1331331,515 · 1 Jul: Circle, 131 addresses on 9 contractsplus 130 TRON addresses, 1,309 Circle events in one day685 · second Circle sweep, 9 Sep
Weeks start on Monday; the first bar covers 1 to 5 July only. Hover a bar for the split.
Chains

TRON holds the money

TRON carries 36% of the events and 93% of the value. The Circle chains behind it show hundreds of events and next to nothing frozen: those are pre-emptive multi-chain blacklists.

TRON's share of the quarter
Freeze events
TRON 36%8 other chains
USD frozen
TRON 93% · $523.5M7%
Freeze events by chainUSD frozen
  1. Tron1,366$523.5M
  2. Ethereum659$39.6M
  3. Base483<$0.1M
  4. Avalanche482none read
  5. Arbitrum245$1.2M
  6. Polygon242$0.4M
  7. Optimism241none read
  8. Robinhood Chain27none read
  9. Solana7none read
Largest freezes

The ten largest, all Tether

Nine of the ten largest freezes are on TRON. Three of the top four landed in the same block second, 21:02:57 UTC on 14 Jul, which points to one action against related wallets.

USDT balance at the moment of the freeze
  1. 01TFQbqaNbmq…C9wC7kTron · 14 Jul21:02:57 UTCtx ↗$85.5M
  2. 02THMprG2t5T…FQ7AYbTron · 11 Augtx ↗$32.6M
  3. 03TJdgB1k6ot…TmzmSKTron · 14 Jul21:02:57 UTCtx ↗$31.0M
  4. 04TXGHxdYbGy…Q9bhUfTron · 14 Jul21:02:57 UTCtx ↗$12.3M
  5. 05TCpxNAMSDU…MqEqGzTron · 9 Jultx ↗$12.3M
  6. 060x5183fed3…00b66eEthereum · 11 Septx ↗$11.8M
  7. 07TWPma8xH48…sPsBeSTron · 8 Septx ↗$9.8M
  8. 08TDH9rgdYTD…4oWCcCTron · 9 Jultx ↗$9.2M
  9. 09TQhT3QWAbF…mTpRD8Tron · 8 Septx ↗$8.0M
  10. 10THH9JJNbLD…FnZUhUTron · 8 Septx ↗$8.0M
Re-checked on-chain on 29 October 2026: the first address still holds 85,527,016 USDT and is still blacklisted. Each row links to the transaction on the chain explorer.
$57.2M

in frozen USDT was destroyed by Tether during the quarter, across 97 addresses. Destruction is usually the step before Tether reissues the funds to victims or to law enforcement.

Circle

One afternoon, every contract

On 1 Jul 2026, between 15:13 and 22:12 UTC, Circle blacklisted the same 131 addresses on USDC on 6 chains and on EURC on 3, one transaction per address on each contract. It also blacklisted 130 TRON addresses the same day.

Addresses blacklisted on 1 Jul, by contractblacklisted
ArbitrumAvalancheBaseEthereumOptimismPolygonTronUSDC131131131131131131130EURC131131131
1,309 events in one day. Across the whole quarter, 239 addresses were blacklisted on USDC on 6 chains, 235 of them on a single day. Hatched cells: no event that day.

For a compliance team this is the useful part: when Circle lists an address, it lists it everywhere at once, so a freeze seen on one chain is a reliable signal for the others.

Trend

A record quarter, driven by Circle

Q3 2026 has more freezes than any quarter in our ledger. Tether's 1,347 sits inside its range of the past year, from 795 to 1,969; the jump comes from Circle.

Freeze events per quarterUSDTUSDCother
01,0002,0003,0004,000Q3 2025: USDT 1,969, USDC 226, other 90, total 2,2852,285Q3 2025Q4 2025: USDT 795, USDC 527, other 245, total 1,5671,567Q4 2025Q1 2026: USDT 1,315, USDC 840, other 100, total 2,2552,255Q1 2026Q2 2026: USDT 1,149, USDC 121, other 45, total 1,3151,315Q2 2026Q3 2026: USDT 1,347, USDC 1,628, other 777, total 3,7523,752Q3 2026
USD frozen on Ethereum, the one chain with dollar values in every quarter: Q3 2025 $241.8M, Q4 2025 $127.8M, Q1 2026 $68.9M, Q2 2026 $40.8M, Q3 2026 $39.6M. We do not compare all-chain dollar totals: before Q3 2026 our history has no balances for TRON freezes.
Methodology

How we counted

Source

One row per event emitted by the issuer contract, for example AddedBlackList and DestroyedBlackFunds for USDT, Blacklisted for USDC and EURC, FreezeAddress for the Paxos tokens.

Dollar value

The address balance at the time of the event, with dollar stablecoins at 1:1. When the balance could not be read the value is left out, never counted as zero.

Period

Block timestamps from 1 Jul 00:00 to 30 Sep 23:59 UTC, 2026. Data extracted on 2026-10-29; the figures on this page will not be revised.

Live record

Day-by-day events continue on the Stablecoin Freeze Ledger. Check a single address with Freeze Check.

Open data

Use the data

stablecoin-freeze-q3-2026.csv
Rows
284
Grain
day × chain × token × action
License
CC BY 4.0
Download CSV
Columns
dateUTC day of the block
chain, issuer, token_symbolwhere, and whose contract
kindfreeze, unfreeze or destroy
events, addressescount of events and of distinct addresses
usd_knownsum of readable balances in USD; empty if none
How to cite

BlockchainAnalysis.io, "Stablecoin Freeze Report Q3 2026", October 31, 2026, https://blockchainanalysis.io/insights/stablecoin-freeze-report-q3-2026. Licensed CC BY 4.0.

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