JPYC’s Okabe says payments generate yield — how stablecoins are reshaping on-chain finance

Democratic staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) of the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee published a report on September 28 examining Iran-linked funding networks. According to the report, of 39 wallets that Israel's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF) designated for seizure in June 2023 as being tied to a figure involved in Hezbollah money laundering, Tether, the issuer of USDT, failed to freeze 34 of them until March 2024, and more than $34.6 million in crypto assets flowed out during that period. The investigation analyzed 846 wallets that US and Israeli authorities had identified as linked to the Iranian government or its proxy forces, and found that 84 percent of them transacted solely or almost solely in USDT. The report noted that relying only on freezes after designation cannot adequately prevent the outflow of funds, and called on stablecoin issuers to continuously monitor high-risk transactions by counterparties and their customers.