The Tether Exploit Against Venezuela & Iran
How was Israel able to synchronize the Venezuela operation with Iran? Grabbing Maduro wasn’t something that could be assumed to go easily. Turns out, Israel had control of both economies via their reliance on Tether. This story first caught my attention:
Venezuela shows how locals turn to Tether-issued USDT stablecoin as governments wobble
h ttps://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/19/venezuelans-turned-to-tether-issued-usdt-stablecoin-as-its-government-wobbled.html
By Liz Napolitano, 19 January 2026
Amid the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, locals rushed to secure their savings by converting their bolívares to dollar-pegged digital tokens called USDT. The timing of the attack may have been surprising to some, but Venezuelans subsequent embrace of stablecoins wasn’t.
From the Middle East to Latin America, ordinary people are turning to USDT to hide and preserve their wealth from authoritative regimes and shield themselves against hyperinflation. And now, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to intervene in local affairs in Colombia and Iran, that survival strategy could gain even greater traction.
“Stablecoins are better dollars, but the reason people get them is out of necessity and out of self-preservation,” Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, co-founder of digital asset lender Ledn, told CNBC. “Wherever they have limitations around dollars flowing freely, stablecoins are going to bust through the door.”
If ZOG seizes just the energy assets of Venezuela, then the government can no longer feed the people, who can now turn to crypto-dollars before their local currency devalues into nothing. The trifecta of Earthlink, stablecoins and dollar reserve status. Actually invading would be counterproductive.
ZOG could do this to all the nations that ZOG sanctions… hey, isn’t Iran having sudden economic collapse? almost on a Mossad timetable?
Since 2014, the digital currency issued by stablecoin giant Tether has become increasingly common in Russia, Iran and other emerging economies, particularly in times of heightened political instability, according to Di Bartolomeo. Using USDT, people can send and receive remittances, protect their money from local currency debasement and pay for goods and services.
People, yes, but governments facing mortal bankster threats couldn’t possibly have been that stup—
Converting high volumes of fiat to dollar-pegged stablecoins leads to high capital outflows, which could contribute to local currency depreciation, Zero Knowledge Consulting CEO Austin Campbell told CNBC.
“If you have a very repressive regime that’s been, to put it bluntly, being s--- to all of its citizens, giving everybody a way to get their money out from under the regime so they can do whatever the hell they want could cause the local currency to collapse,” said Campbell, who is also an adjunct professor at NYU.
Iran’s crypto trades fall as hacks and power gaps bite
h ttps://www.gncrypto.news/news/iran-crypto-trades-fall-hacks-power-gaps-bite/
Opinion By Sebile Fane, 27 August 2025
Iran’s flagship exchange, Nobitex, lost more than $90 million in June when hackers drained multiple chains. The hit shook user trust and cut daily volumes by a third within a week. Weeks later, Tether froze 42 addresses tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), blocking stablecoin rails many Iranians use for cross-border trade. The blacklist also trapped funds parked at Nobitex, deepening the liquidity crunch.
Energy pressure piled on. Officials say illegal or subsidized mining now burns up to 2,000 MW – roughly two nuclear reactors’ output – forcing summer blackouts and fresh shutdown orders. New directives let police seize rigs running off-grid power, pushing many miners offshore or underground.
Bitcoin mining, not real mining.
Regulation remains half-open. Tehran legalized licensed platforms in January, but every cryptoflow must pass central-bank gateways, adding friction and KYC fears. Traders who once moved funds freely now split tickets or switch to informal hawala channels, diluting visible volume.
A pro-Israel group hit Bank Sepah and Nobitex during June’s regional flare-up, showing that exchanges can be military targets. Many users pulled coins into cold wallets, shrinking exchange order books even further. Add inflation. The rial keeps sliding, but locals choose dollars or gold over volatile crypto after last year’s 60% BTC drawdown. Google search interest for “buy USD” now beats “buy bitcoin” in Persian.
June 2025 was the test run for what happened 10-11 Jan 2026.
How a $700 Million Tether Freeze Exposed Iran Sanctions Gaps on Tron
h ttps://fincrimecentral.com/tether-wallet-freeze-iranian-sanctions-tron/
15 January 2026
A sweeping freeze of 112 wallets [on 11 January] holding roughly $700 million in USDT has put Tether and the Tron blockchain at the center of a major compliance and sanctions evasion debate. This bold action, unfolding over both the Tron and Ethereum blockchains, has amplified concerns about stablecoin misuse by actors seeking to bypass international regulations, most notably those connected to Iran. With tensions running high between Iran and Israel, and legislative momentum building for US stablecoin regulation, this latest freeze is much more than a routine compliance move—it is a pivotal moment for the intersection of digital assets, geopolitics, and anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement.
The latest wallet freeze cannot be understood in isolation from Iran’s evolving crypto ecosystem. Over the past several years, Iranian exchanges have developed elaborate systems to circumvent international financial restrictions. At the heart of this activity is Nobitex, Iran’s largest and most influential crypto platform, which handles a significant share of the country’s digital currency transactions.
The timing of Tether’s wallet freeze is no coincidence. The freeze comes days after a coordinated law enforcement effort targeting “pig butchering” scam wallets, in collaboration with major exchanges like Coinbase and OKX. Yet, this new set of addresses appears distinct—many of the largest frozen wallets only received the block after significant inflows, and the action seems tightly focused on flows emanating from Iranian sources.
Tether is a creation of the American Deep State. I haven’t blogged on that; didn’t know I had to; but the proof is right here. If crypto was anonymous then this wouldn’t have been possible. Turns out it is possible, and for guess who.
Moreover, Iran’s own crypto policies have undergone several changes, particularly since 2021, when the government began actively encouraging crypto mining as a way to boost hard currency reserves. The Central Bank of Iran has banned trading cryptocurrencies mined abroad, but domestic mining and peer-to-peer transactions have thrived, creating fertile ground for regulatory evasion.
One understands why they did it. An energy-rich nation wasn’t allowed to sell its energy, so it turned its energy into crypto. But Iran made the mistake of continuing to use the dollar for its reserve currency, instead of building something in-house, which gave ZOG the opening it needed.
Iran using Tether is like Antifa using Tor. It all goes through Langley, Virginia.
Did Tether freeze Venezuela’s stablecoins? Is Iran next?
h ttps://coingeek.com/did-tether-freeze-venezuela-stablecoins-is-iran-next/
20 January 2026
Tether may have just frozen a good chunk of Venezuela’s stablecoin wealth, but other nations using USDT to dodge U.S. economic sanctions have yet to face any blowback.
On January 10, the Whale Alert blockchain tracking service began flagging a series of major freezes of the USDT stablecoin by its issuer Tether. Before the day was done, the total amount of USDT frozen in five digital wallets had topped $182 million, in what appeared to be a coordinated action against a single target.
The size of the freezes has led to speculation that the tokens in question may have ties to the Venezuelan government. The same day the tokens were frozen, the Wall Street Journal dropped a report on USDT’s pivotal role in helping Venezuela’s state-run oil company evade U.S. economic sanctions.
As much as 80% of Petroleos de Venezuela’s (PdVSA) oil revenue is believed to be generated via USDT, but the Journal claimed Tether was helping U.S. authorities “freeze dozens of wallets identified as being involved in the Venezuelan oil trade.” As the Journal put it: “Tether’s financial ties to Venezuela put the cryptocurrency company in prime position to aid U.S. authorities as they seek to track down what happened to funds allegedly stolen by the [President Nicolás] Maduro regime.”
USDT also helped average Venezuelans avoid the severe depreciation of the local bolivar currency as the sanctions took hold.
Oh how generous of them. “We have to put our money in shekels because the Jew is sanctioning us.”
Ari Redbord, TRM Labs’ global head of policy, told the Journal that “the issue isn’t Tether itself, but the dual-use reality of stablecoins. They can be a civilian lifeline and, under sanctions pressure, a tool for evasion.”
Last autumn, Tether promised to launch a new U.S.-focused, GENIUS-compliant stablecoin called USAT. However, USAT failed to launch in December as advertised, and the most recent tweet from its official X account contains the somewhat ironic promise that USAT users can “ditch the wait” once the token launches.
One stablecoin that did launch last year was USD1, courtesy of the Trump family’s DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLF). The token’s market cap currently stands at just under $3.5 billion, roughly $700 million of which was added since Christmas Eve.
From its inception during the middle of Trump’s 2024 election campaign, WLF promoted itself as a means of empowering those who, for whatever reason, lacked access to mainstream financial services. But beyond issuing USD1 and the company’s ‘governance’ token WLFI, the company seemed to have no other functional purpose.
Tether may have served its purpose, then. This explains ZOG’s sudden feeding frenzy… this Tether Exploit has been deployed, and they’re rushing to secure maximum results while running it into the ground so people will rush into the next dollar-backed stablecoin. Rinse and repeat.