Tether freezes FTX-related funds following investigation

Tether, the company behind the largest stablecoin by market capitalization USDT, has frozen funds on the Tron blockchain worth about $46 million. This is at the request of investigators, which comes during a liquidity crisis on the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

The company had to block the assets of a portfolio which apparently belongs to the FTX exchange. And USDT has reportedly been temporarily frozen, “while investigations are ongoing,” as confirmed by a person connected to Tether, according to Tether’s website. published by CoinDesk.

“We are receiving requests from regulators to freeze assets while the investigation is ongoing,” a Tether executive told the aforementioned news outlet.

In any case, it is not clear which organization has made the request or what exactly is being investigated. So far, there has been no official statement from the company, nor from Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s CTO.

Today, in the early hours of the day, all eyes were on USDT, which momentarily disengaged from the dollar. USDT momentarily disengaged from the US dollar, falling 2%. However, it has since stabilized and at the time of writing the stablecoin is trading at $0.99, as reported by data by CoinGecko.

At the moment, the cryptocurrency ecosystem is affected by extreme user fear, amid the risks of contagion from the liquidity problems on the exchange FTX and its related commercial arm Alameda Research.