TRON, Tether and Chainalysis launch task force to combat USDT crime on the network
Key Facts
TRON, Tether and Chainalysis announced on November 12, 2026, the establishment of the Digital Crimes Task Force to combat illicit activity involving USD₮ on the TRON network. The three organizations said the initiative aims to shorten the time between identifying a threat and taking action by detecting suspicious activity, preparing actionable intelligence and coordinating with law enforcement. Its work includes supporting investigations and freezing assets before criminals move the funds. In addition to proactive investigations, the task force will accept reports and asset-freezing requests from law enforcement. The announcement puts speed of coordination and freezing at the center of the initiative, without specifying operational results achieved at its launch.
The cases the task force said it would target include investment and romance scams, stolen funds and hacks, terrorism financing, and North Korean cyber operations. Its remit also extends to money laundering linked to gangs, drug trafficking and other activities. The effort to combat scams comes amid a sharp rise in some types; TRON said, citing Chainalysis data, that impersonation scams increased by more than 1,400% year over year in 2025. Chainalysis estimated that illicit cryptocurrency addresses received at least $154 billion that year, up 162% from the previous year. The company attributed most of the increase to a 694% rise in the value of funds received by sanctioned entities.
In a separate analysis of scams, Chainalysis said operations for which it identified on-chain links to artificial intelligence tool providers extracted an average of $3.2 million per operation in 2025. The average was $719,000 for operations with no such links identified, making the first group’s average 4.5 times higher. The comparison is limited to links with tool providers that could be identified on-chain, according to the company. The linked group’s median daily revenue was also $4,838, compared with $518 for the other group. The linked group averaged 35.1 transfers a day, compared with 3.89 transfers for the other group, Chainalysis said.
Chainalysis said illicit activity’s share of cryptocurrency transaction volume attributed to identified entities remained below 1% in 2025, although its estimate was slightly higher than in 2024. In a subsequent update to 2024 flows, the company raised its estimate from $40.9 billion when it published its previous report to $57.2 billion a year later. The revision shows that flow estimates can change as additional addresses and activity are identified; the company said scam addresses received at least $14 billion on-chain during 2025. It expected the total to exceed $17 billion as more illicit wallet addresses are identified. These figures put scams among the cases the task force will address, alongside hacks, terrorism financing and money laundering.
Tether said it had frozen more than $7 billion linked to illicit activity, working with more than 360 law enforcement agencies in 73 countries. In a separate statement published on November 2, 2026, the company said the total amount of USD₮ frozen at secondary-market addresses had exceeded $7 billion, and that about $1.2 billion in funds linked to scams and theft had been returned to their owners or to law enforcement through reissuance. Tether also said it froze more than $1.5 billion in USD₮ within 30 minutes of the Binance hack on October 29, 2026. These are figures the company provided about its previous actions and do not represent reported results for the new task force. The task force’s founding announcement did not specify a date for a subsequent operational step or a numerical target for measuring its performance.
The initiative operates on a network that TRON’s announcement said hosts more than $94 billion in circulating supply of Tether USD. The announcement added that the network had recorded more than 414 million user accounts and more than 16 billion transactions as of November 2026. This scale gives priority to addressing illicit activity involving the currency on the network, while the announced mechanism focuses on information sharing and coordination with authorities. The move follows the dissolution of the T3 Financial Crime Unit, a previous alliance between TRON, Tether and TRM Labs established in 2024, according to The Block. The sources did not say the new task force officially replaces the previous unit. TRON described the initiative’s aim as linking related activity, identifying criminal networks and disrupting the financial incentives for crime.