Tether Freezes $1.45M in THORChain USDT Vaults, Then Reverses Blacklist Hours Later

Key Takeaways:

• The amount of about $1.45 million in USDT was temporarily frozen in THORChain vault addresses.
• According to THORChain, the addresses in question were not TRON based addresses, but were still blacklisted without warning.
• Later, Tether unfroze the wallets and the trading on THORChain resumed.

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THORChain faced an unexpected disruption after several of its USDT vault addresses were temporarily blacklisted by Tether.

Technical co-founder Chad Barraford said the stablecoin issuer later reversed the action, but the brief freeze has renewed questions about centralized control over assets used inside decentralized finance protocols.

It appears that USDT has chosen to blacklist THORChain vaults of USDT on the TRON blockchain. This is unprecedented in our industry and raises questions for all DeFi protocols about the safety of this asset.

— Chad Barraford (@CBarraford) October 9, 2026

Original report by Barraford stated that Tether had blocked THORChain vault addresses on USDT of TRON blockchain.

Based on the incident reports, a total of 4 wallets were estimated to have lost a total of approximately 1.45 million USDT during the freeze. According to THORChain, it had no prior warning or explanation of any kind from Tether with regards to the action.

The transfer marks a departure from the protocol, says Barraford, and they are making a special effort to reach out to Tether to see what caused the outage. This freeze caused temporary idleness around those USDT reserves, but awaited pivotal access restoration by THORChain.

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Two or so hours later, Barraford updated the site that the addresses seemed to be unfrozen.

Trading and other activities would restart shortly thereafter, he said. Why he was placed on the black list has yet to be publicly disclosed, but at his last update, no explanation was given.

Although the speedy reversal reduced its effect on the users’ day-to-day operations, it did raise concerns regarding triggering mechanisms and the possibility of future episodes impacting the DeFi space.

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This incident may represent a conflict between decentralised protocols and centralized stablecoins.

Without a need to use a traditional centralized exchange, THORChain enables asset swaps between blockchains. But when a protocol implements USDT, they still have to worry of Tether potentially being able to freeze certain addresses.

This control works even if the stable coin is employed within decentralized applications.

Barraford noted that the incident should cause developers to question the amount of trust they must assume with the asset issuers who have control over wallet asset balances.

The THORChain incidents come after other issues of seized USDT balances. Conduit Technology, a cross-border payments platform, recently sued over USDT being frozen for an investigation in Brazil to the tune of $2.76 million.

Two other operators from Thailand have sued Tether for $42.4 million of allegedly frozen USDT.

The cases do not relate to THORChain but it reinforces a key takeaway for DeFi fans: USDT can move between the public blockchains and at the same time, the issuer can technically exercise control over individual addresses.

The money is now available for THORChain. Chief among these questions is whether the DeFi protocols can rely so heavily on centralized stablecoins if it is possible that access can change at any moment.

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