Tether USDt price near peg as issuer defends Iran wallet freezes
Published on 10/31/2026 at 07:11 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSUSDT compliance dispute in focus
- Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said wallet freezes contributed to a 94 percent decline in Iran-linked stablecoin volumes.
- Tether said approximately 550 million USD in Iran-linked USDT was frozen during 2026.
- Investing.com displayed Tether USDt at 0.9989 USD when the page was read on October 31, 2026.
- The Senate review and Tether's response measure different aspects of the issue and should not be treated as directly comparable.
Tether USDt price remains close to its dollar peg while attention shifts to the issuer's response to scrutiny over Iran-linked wallets. Investing.com displayed USDT at 0.9989 USD on the page read on October 31, 2026. The same page showed a 24-hour volume of 119.64 billion USD, a market capitalization of 180.25 billion USD, a rank of three and 180.51 billion USDT in circulation. These figures are a snapshot from Investing.com, rather than a verified UTC daily close comparison.
Issuer counters Senate scrutiny
The immediate news driver is a dispute over sanctions compliance. In a post on October 19, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said that Tether had frozen flagged addresses an average of four weeks before designations by the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and Israel's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing since 2023. He also said Tether acted before Chainalysis labels in 99 percent of the cases cited.
According to ForexCrunch, Ardoino attributed a 94 percent decline in Iran-linked stablecoin volumes to the freezes. Tether also said approximately 550 million USD in Iran-linked USDT was blocked during 2026, with more than 470 million USD connected to actions in April and July.
Different measures, different conclusions
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report, published on September 28, examined 846 sanctioned wallets with Iranian links. It found that 84 percent predominantly used USDT and criticized Tether's handling of flagged wallets before 2024. That finding describes the composition of a selected wallet group, while Tether's 94 percent figure describes a claimed change in transaction volume. ForexCrunch noted that Tether has not published the methodology behind the 94 percent calculation. The two figures therefore should not be presented as a direct confirmation or contradiction.
What the peg means for users
Tether's own website says USDt tokens are pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar and backed by reserves. The issuer describes the token as a digital representation of fiat currency that operates across multiple blockchain networks. For market participants, the compliance dispute is more relevant to access, address freezes and regulatory treatment than to a conventional growth thesis: sanctioned-wallet actions can affect specific users without necessarily representing a supply shock across the entire token.
For Tether USDt price monitoring, the 0.9989 USD reading remains within the narrow range expected of a dollar-referenced stablecoin. Investors and traders should distinguish the token's intended peg from the operational and regulatory risks created by issuer intervention, exchange policies and jurisdictional restrictions.
More coverage is available on the Tether USDt topic page.
