Through a statement from Tether Operations Limited, the company behind Tether, noted that it has not been blocking Ethereum addresses connected to Tornado Cash following the measures imposed by the United States Department of the Treasury. Although experts point out that it has been restricting them, according to Marianella Vanci in Criptonoticias.
Tether’s argument for not blocking Ethereum addresses linked to Tornado Cash is that “no US law enforcement agency or regulator has made such a request,” as it notes in a statement.
Tether has criticized Circle, the company behind USD Coin, for abiding by the measures taken by the US.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire explained that under the US court order, the company must block specific addresses included in the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blacklist.
Tether criticizes, but does the same
Analyst Patrick Hansen warned on Twitter that Tether is actively blocking 10 times more addresses on the Ethereum network than its competitor Circle.
Hansen brings up the graph from Galaxy Digital Research where it can be seen that since June 30 it has blocked almost 700 Ethereum addresses. While Circle has only done it on 80 addresses.
It should be noted that Circle is regulated in the United States as an electronic money platform. By contrast, Tether is not a US company, does not operate there, nor does it have US customers.
However, the firm behind Tether sees OFAC sanctions as part of its world-class compliance program.