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- Tether freezes $27M USDT tied to Garantex after EU sanctions.
- Garantex halts operations and vows to fight unfair sanctions.
- Crypto exchanges face rising regulatory scrutiny amid global conflicts.
Tether (USDT) has frozen $27 million in an account belonging to a Russia-based cryptocurrency exchange called Garantex. The platform revealed that trading and withdrawal have been halted at Garantex, which has put its users in a compromising situation. This comes after the European Union froze the exchange’s account, stating that it has connections with some Russian blacklisted banks.
Garantex has been under increased scrutiny and notified its users that all USDT in Russian wallets could be at risk. The exchange has vowed to fight the sanctions that it considers unfair and unfitting to disrupt its operations. Currently, customers cannot access their funds as the company’s website now has a maintenance message from Garantex.
Thus, the sanctions against Garantex can be viewed as another step by the EU in the increased regulation of cryptocurrency exchanges connected to Russia. This is two years after the United States first levied the sanction on the exchange in 2022 due to similar reasons related to its linkages to unlawful occasions.
Tether’s Frozen Funds Fallout
USDT’s issuer, Tether, has not provided an official statement regarding the freezing of funds. Meanwhile, people in the industry are closely pondering numerous questions that this move might pose to the entire crypto market.
This raises concerns about the increasing confrontation between the crypto industry and international authorities, especially during geopolitical crises. Considering that governments are going after exchanges to enforce sanctions, the future of decentralized finance, or the position of stablecoins in the cross-border payments industry.
As for Garantex, there is no information about it on such platforms as CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap but platform like Coin Paprika, have been reveals that daily trading volume has increased massively since data from 2022. Garantex showed the following chart: the turnover of organization reached $121.6 million by March 1, 2025, while it was only $11 million on March 1, 2022, and increased more than 1000% times in three years. Nonetheless, Garantex is significantly behind Binance, which exchanges $23 billion per day, based on CoinGecko.
Source: CoinPaprika
Garantex users switched to wait for further comments from the exchange and Tether. This shows that crypto platforms are still at risk of facing regulations and possible impacts on the rest of the digital asset market. People in the crypto community will be observing how this crisis unfolds for Garantex, and if it happens, this is the precedent that Tether has set for freezing in the crypto.
