USDT and USDC Freezes in October 2026: 563 Addresses

In October 2026 Tether and Circle froze 563 addresses on Ethereum and TRON, according to the contract events our freeze tracker reads every day. About 1.95 billion USDT and 831 million USDC sat on those addresses. Almost all of that money was frozen in a single evening, 29 October, after the Binance hot-wallet theft; without that day the month's total was about $191 million.

What we count

Each freeze is an event written by the token's own contract. On Ethereum the USDT contract records a freeze as AddedBlackList and a burn of frozen funds as DestroyedBlackFunds; you can read both functions in its verified code.^[1] The USDC contract records Blacklisted.^[2] On TRON the USDT contract has the same blacklist functions.^[3]

Our script reads these events from the contracts once a day. For each frozen address it records the token balance it finds there. Two limits apply:

• The balance is the one we saw when we recorded the freeze. For freezes before 30 October, when the tracker started, that is the balance on 30 October, not on the day of the freeze.
• USDT and USDC on other networks, such as Solana and BNB Chain, are not counted yet.

October in numbers

Most freezes were small. The median frozen balance was about $57,000. 58 addresses held $1 million or more. On 113 addresses, a fifth of the total, there was nothing left by the time we recorded them: the funds had already moved on, or never arrived.

TRON had most of the freezes, 486 of 570. Ethereum had fewer freezes but far larger balances, because of 29 October.

The busiest days were 30 October, with 72 freezes, and 14 October, with 67.

29 October: one evening, $2.6 billion

At 20:24 UTC on 29 October an outside address drained Binance's "Binance 14" hot wallet; at 20:41 it took 780 million USDC from another Binance wallet.^[4] Binance later said an attacker had submitted unauthorized withdrawals and that about $3 billion had been frozen.^[5]

The freezes followed within minutes:

Only the first two rows are the address that received the Binance funds on-chain. The other four were frozen in the same 20 minutes, but neither Binance nor the issuers have publicly linked them to the theft, so we do not either. Our hacks tracker has the Binance case, and the full story is in our Binance post.

Why no unfreezes

None of the frozen addresses we track was released in October. Both issuers can lift a block: Tether's terms let it freeze where the law requires or where it decides it is prudent,^[7] and Circle's terms let it block USDC addresses.^[8] Whether and when a block is lifted is the issuer's decision, not the holder's. See how Tether and Circle decide what to freeze.

What to do

1. Check the sender before you receive stablecoins. Most October freezes hit small and mid-sized balances, not just big hacks. See how to check USDT before receiving it.
2. Look up an address yourself. Etherscan and Tronscan show the contract's blacklist functions; our freeze tracker lists the largest recent freezes.
3. If your USDT is frozen, go to the issuer. Only Tether or Circle can lift a freeze. Read what to do when USDT is frozen.
4. Ignore "unfreeze" services. No one can lift an issuer freeze for a fee.

Data: USDT and USDC contract events on Ethereum and TRON, 1–31 October 2026, read by TopAML on 30 October–3 November 2026.