blacklist

According to The Block, "on-chain detective" ZachXBT revealed that Circle has unfrozen one of the 16 USDC wallets that were previously blacklisted. The wallet address is 0x61f...e543, associated with Goated.com, and currently holds approximately 130,966 USDC. ZachXBT stated that the remaining affected wallets are expected to be restored in the near future.This unfreezing occurred after strong criticism from the public. Earlier reports indicated that Circle had frozen the USDC balances in 16 hot wallets related to different businesses, and ZachXBT claimed that this action was related to an undisclosed civil case in the United States, which is under confidentiality.ZachXBT harshly criticized this freezing action, stating that the parties involved did not provide any basis for the freeze and described it as one of the most incompetent freezing operations he has seen in his five years of work. MetaMask security researcher Taylor Monahan also criticized Circle on social media for lacking accountability mechanisms. Currently, Circle has not issued a public statement regarding the specific wallet or the legal basis for the freeze.

The global anti-money laundering organization Financial Action Task Force (FATF) pointed out in its latest report that stablecoin peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers have become a key source of money laundering risk in the crypto ecosystem, especially when users trade directly through unmanaged wallets, making it more difficult to track and regulate related activities due to the lack of regulated intermediaries.FATF stated that stablecoins have now become the most commonly used virtual assets in illegal crypto transactions. According to Chainalysis data, approximately 84% of the $154 billion in illegal crypto transactions in 2025 involved stablecoins. The report recommends that jurisdictions require stablecoin issuers to have the technical capability to freeze, destroy, or blacklist assets involving suspicious addresses when necessary, and to embed compliance features such as allow-lists and deny-lists in smart contracts.FATF noted that compared to the highly volatile Bitcoin and Ethereum, stablecoins like Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) are increasingly being used by criminal networks for fund transfers and money laundering activities due to their price stability, high liquidity, and ease of cross-border transfer. Additionally, the report mentioned that North Korean hacker groups and entities linked to Iran are using stablecoins to launder proceeds from cybercrime and are converting funds into fiat currency through over-the-counter traders or peer-to-peer platforms.FATF calls for strengthened regulation of stablecoin issuers and encourages the broader adoption of blockchain analysis tools and anti-money laundering measures such as the "travel rule" within the crypto industry.

Anthropic has announced that it will challenge the U.S. Department of Defense's decision to blacklist it, which claims that the company refused to lift all restrictions on the military's use of its Claude model. The company also expressed that it is "very saddened" by the escalating dispute. This cutting-edge artificial intelligence company is doing something that few others have done since Trump returned to the White House: directly and publicly challenging the Trump administration.Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth threatened earlier on Friday to sever Anthropic's ties with numerous clients through a "supply chain risk" designation, a practice historically reserved for "foreign adversaries." Anthropic stated, "No matter how the 'War Department' intimidates or punishes, it will not change our stance on mass surveillance or fully automated weapons." "We will legally challenge any supply chain risk designation."

Trump has filed a $5 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and CEO Jamie Dimon, accusing the bank of refusing to provide financial services to him and his businesses for political reasons. He hinted at taking legal action over the weekend on the Truth Social platform. The Trump family claims they were forced into the cryptocurrency industry because they were blacklisted by major banks.His son, Donald Trump Jr., stated, "We got into cryptocurrency because we were de-banked." Meanwhile, World Liberty Financial, supported by the Trump family, has applied for a banking license this month to promote its stablecoin business.

Binance today disclosed a blacklist of "listing agents," which includes BitABC, Central Research, May / Dannie, Andrew Lee, Suki Yang, Fiona Lee, and Kenny Z. Binance stated that this list is not exhaustive and cautioned against trusting any "listing agents." The information regarding the above individuals or entities obtained from public channels is as follows:BitABC is a cryptocurrency consulting, incubation, and project acceleration company that primarily offers services such as project promotion, community building, liquidity incentives, and market consulting, claiming to help crypto projects gain exposure and growth in the early stages on trading platforms.May / Dannie is a partner of the previously disclosed improper market maker Web3Port by Binance. The key figure May Liu and her team established a "brokerage pipeline to Binance," from Spark Digital Capital to Web3Port, and then to Whisper. Spark operates under the guise of a VC, actually running a market outsourcing + FA business, relying on VC investments in projects to obtain free tokens for themselves. After the industry turmoil in 21 and 22, project parties were unwilling to provide tokens for free, prompting Spark to shift to an incubator model, establishing Web3Port to provide project packaging and VC connections in exchange for 1-3% token shares.Suki Yang is a cryptocurrency quantitative trader and investor, a former member of Pantera Capital, and has worked at several crypto platforms (such as CertiK, Hyype, etc.). She also founded the Solana chain meme launcher Lmao.fun.Andrew Lee is a practitioner in the cryptocurrency industry who has participated in several blockchain projects (such as Handshake, Purse.io, etc.), possibly involved in project promotion or mediation.Fiona Lee and Kenny Z have limited publicly available information, suspected to be personal project consultants or intermediaries, or engaged in listing coordination or project liaison.Central Research may be a cryptocurrency research or consulting institution, with few specific details publicly available.

Binance Wallet posted on platform X that it has discovered a hack on the ZEROBASE platform's frontend, which has led to some users being induced to authorize malicious contracts. To ensure asset security, Binance Wallet has taken three emergency measures: blocking suspected malicious website domains, blacklisting related malicious contracts, and committing to send alerts to potentially affected users within 30 minutes.

ChainCatcher message, WLFI has stated on platform X that it is aware of the community's concerns regarding the recent wallet blacklist, and WLFI emphasizes that it will never suppress normal activities. In the past few days, 272 wallets have been blacklisted. This only represents a small portion of the total number of holders, and this action is purely to prevent user losses while investigating and assisting affected users.The breakdown of these 272 wallets is as follows: 215 cases (approximately 79%) are related to phishing attacks: the team has intervened to prevent hackers from stealing funds and is working with legitimate owners to protect/transfer assets. 50 cases (approximately 18.4%) had owners report violations; the team blacklisted these addresses at their request to help protect/recover funds. 5 cases (approximately 1.8%) were marked as high-risk exposure (security risks are under review). 1 case (approximately 0.4%) is suspected of misappropriating funds from other holders; a comprehensive internal review is underway.WLFI states that it will not ban normal trading activities and will take immediate action when alerted to malicious or high-risk activities that may harm community members. The follow-up measures are as follows: it will continue to work with legitimate owners to verify control and ensure the safety of funds. After the review is completed, clear results for each category will be announced. Any broader actions affecting holders will be publicly released.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cryptonews and Etherscan data, WLFI has blacklisted the wallet address associated with advisor Sun Yuchen, freezing all its token allocations. The project party claims to have frozen a total of approximately 2.94 billion WLFI, including 540 million unlocked tokens (approximately 101 million USD) and 2.4 billion staked tokens (approximately 452 million USD).

ChainCatcher message, the Trump family project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) disclosed that it thwarted two hacker attacks originating from end users being compromised (rather than a WLFI vulnerability). The transactions show that a WLFI designated wallet had blacklisted a batch of wallets identified as compromised (private keys lost) before going live. These on-chain actions foiled attempts to steal funds from Lockbox. The team is assisting affected holders in regaining access.

ChainCatcher news, OneKey founder Yishi posted a screenshot of being blacklisted by Curve Finance with the caption "Graduated."Previous report, OneKey founder Yishi spoke out about the Resupply attack incident, calling on projects like Curve to refund user losses.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, the latest report from the blockchain compliance company AMLBot shows that Tether's wallet blacklist mechanism has significant delays, resulting in over $78 million in illegal funds being successfully transferred before the freeze took effect.The report points out that Tether's multi-signature contract setup on the Ethereum and Tron blockchains causes an average delay of 44 minutes from submission to effectiveness of the blacklist. On the Ethereum chain, approximately 28.5 million USDT were transferred during the blacklist delay, averaging over $365,000 per transfer. On the Tron chain, $49.6 million evaded the freeze, with about 4.88% of the flagged wallets exploiting this loophole to conduct 2-3 transfers, averaging $292,000 per wallet.

ChainCatcher message, Meteora posted on X stating that one of the main concerns of the community is to prevent MET from flowing to bad actors, such as wash trading users or addresses associated with entities like Kelsier Ventures.To address this issue, Meteora will launch a community-driven initiative—creating a public, verifiable blacklist that lists all addresses that will be excluded from MET distribution.Meteora has collaborated with Bubblemaps and Rugcheck to refine this blacklist, allowing any user to submit wallet addresses they suspect of abusing the LP incentive program, ensuring fair distribution of MET.

ChainCatcher news, Mike Alfred posted on the X platform: "The Trump administration is set to announce a zero capital gains tax on cryptocurrency transactions at the crypto summit on Friday."In response, Adam Cochran, a partner at Cinneamhain Ventures, stated: "Mike has blocked me for repeatedly fact-checking him, but that won't stop me. The president cannot unilaterally change tax law. Only Congress can. This is one of the few powers explicitly granted to Congress by the Constitution. Even if the president announces this decision or attempts to sign an executive order for it, it won't make it law. This is no more effective than me claiming to be a cupcake."

ChainCatcher news, according to the official announcement, Bybit has launched a new API for updating the blacklist of suspicious wallet addresses discovered to date. This API will simplify and expedite the process of recovering lost funds.Bybit will continuously update this list to ensure that network defenders and security partners can effectively intercept fraudulent activities. Successful interceptions will receive a 10% reward to strengthen their commitment to the security of the entire industry.

ChainCatcher message, mETH Protocol released a Bybit security incident update, which disclosed that a security incident occurred at Bybit leading to unauthorized withdrawals of mETH and cmETH from the exchange. This included three transactions through DEX that exchanged 8,000 mETH for ETH, and an attempt to withdraw 15,000 cmETH initiated through mETH Protocol, which was not successfully completed.Mantle or mETH Protocol posed no risk and reduced cmETH liquidity on the Mantle Network L2, and the attacker's wallet address has been blacklisted to prevent further cmETH transfers or interactions within the protocol. Ultimately, no unauthorized cmETH withdrawals occurred, the contract has been restored, and operations have returned to normal.

ChainCatcher message, OKX President Hong Fang stated that the hacker address involved in the Bybit theft case has been added to OKX's blacklist. Engineers will closely monitor these addresses, and immediate action will be taken if there is any movement of funds.The OKX team is also in contact with the Bybit team to provide any IT security support and liquidity support that can be offered at this time.

ChainCatcher message, Linea announced the completion of an additional witch attack analysis targeting LXP holders. The analysis found approximately 476,000 addresses showing clear signs of witch attack activity, which will be added to the existing blacklist and will not be eligible for the LXP token airdrop.If users believe they have been incorrectly flagged, they can submit an appeal via the feedback form within the next two weeks (by January 29, 2025, 23:59 UTC). Linea stated that this is the last planned witch attack review, and the final blacklist will be updated in mid-February 2025.

ChainCatcher news, Vitalik commented on the incident where Soneium blacklisted some Meme coins on its social platform, stating that Soneium's situation vividly demonstrates the benefits of launching Ethereum L2 for businesses and users. Businesses can make very detailed choices about how much control to retain and give to users. But whatever rules they choose, those are the rules. Everything is on-chain, transparent, and can be audited by third parties.Developers can also create a system that lets users know they can send transactions on L2 when needed, but there is a significant barrier - the sequencer can restrict but not censor. This is essentially what Sony has done. This is all the free market at work. As an ecosystem, it is important to ensure that:A large amount of financial activity occurs in a completely open environment;There are enough tools for users to understand the properties of the on-chain environment they are in.Previous news, Soneium, a Layer2 project by Sony, sparked controversy by blacklisting some Meme coins suspected of infringing intellectual property on the day of its mainnet launch. This led to some tokens being restricted from trading and not being supported on the official block explorer.