Wallet Blacklists Are Becoming a Core Feature of Stablecoins

[chainsniff]

By late 2025, stablecoin issuers had blacklisted 5,700 wallets holding roughly $2.5 billion, according to Elliptic—and about 75% of those addresses held USDT.
Tether alone says it has assisted in 1,800 investigations across 62 countries, freezing $3.4 billion tied to alleged criminal activity.

This growing blacklist infrastructure highlights the tradeoff of scale: stablecoins that dominate global payments also become tools of regulatory control. The more systemically important they are, the less “permissionless” they can realistically remain.

[lingriiddd]

permissionless until you’re big enough to matter, then the blacklist comes out

[JanEmil]

Is that not good thing?