Overview

The T3 Financial Crime Fighting Unit, a collaboration between the Tron blockchain, stablecoin issuer Tether, and blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs, announced the freezing of $100 million worth of Tether's USDT linked to illegal activities since its formation.

Key Points

• The unit has frozen $100 million of USDT linked to criminal dealings.
• Monitoring efforts have spanned multiple continents, analyzing millions of transactions.

Details

The venture involves TRM Labs using its blockchain intelligence to assist Tron and Tether in identifying and freezing USDT associated with illicit transactions. With nearly $60 billion in USDT presently issued on the Tron blockchain, the initiative aims to target various forms of financial misconduct.

Chris Janczewski, the head of global investigations at TRM Labs, highlighted that money laundering remains a significant concern, particularly via 'money laundering as a service' where illegal actors hire services on the dark web. He mentioned:

"Blockchain is a bad place to do money laundering because it’s so transparent."

As a notable statistic, about 3 million of the frozen USDT connections have been traced back to North Korean activities aimed at infiltrating crypto projects for funding.

Conclusion

The T3 Initiative strives not only to recover funds for victims but also to deter potential offenders from engaging in illegal activities within blockchain frameworks such as Tron.