Frozen Assets: Tether Chills 131 ISIS-K Wallets as OFAC Drops the Address Book 🧊

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 134 cryptocurrency wallet addresses tied to ISIS-Khorasan on Wednesday, adding them to its Specially Designated Nationals list. Stablecoin issuer Tether froze balances associated with 131 of those wallets, all on the Tron network, while the remaining three sanctioned addresses resided on Monero, according to blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis.

The 131 Tron addresses collectively received more than $1.4 million in crypto donations since 2023 and sent over $880,000, Chainalysis reported. ISIS-K, designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist since September 2015, has historically solicited crypto through donation campaigns hosted across various websites and messaging platforms, the firm said. Chainalysis identified multiple donation addresses used by the group spanning Tron, Monero, and the Bitcoin ($BTC) network, including wallets that forwarded funds to Syria-based cryptocurrency exchanges.

The latest designations came roughly a week after OFAC's June 22 sanctions against three individuals and six entities across Europe, the Middle East and West Africa, including Syria-based money services business Bitcoin Xchange and Turkish MSB Spider. OFAC described that prior action as targeting "key facilitators who enable ISIS to move funds among its regional affiliates."

Blockchain analytics continue to play a growing role in enforcement actions tied to illicit finance. In April, blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs said onchain evidence was central to securing terrorism-financing convictions of three individuals in Indonesia during 2024 and 2025. "Indonesian courts have demonstrated that cryptocurrency evidence — wallet addresses, transaction histories, on-chain flows — is not only admissible but can anchor a terrorism financing prosecution," TRM said in a statement. Earlier this year, OFAC also sanctioned Ethereum addresses linked to the Sinaloa cartel, extending the use of onchain intelligence across separate enforcement fronts.