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points by kolanos 7 hours ago | 0 comments

> About $2.4 billion out of this is already frozen by Circle and Tether. Some of the big ones:

How does freezing crypto work in this context?

[–] redox99 7 hours ago

The smart contract for those tokens supports freezing. Tether just calls the freeze function on that address.

[–] cowlevel 6 hours ago

And it's impossible to mix them because Ethereum is even anonymous than Bitcoin.

[–] hackernud3s 6 hours ago

Isn't it already too late at that point? The tokens would have moved already.

[–] petu 6 hours ago

Moved where? Moving to a different wallet wouldn't prevent freezing. It's 5B, impossible to cash out or exchange for different crypto quickly.

[–] hackernud3s 5 hours ago

right but too late to call freeze on the original wallet address as per gp's post. I would imagine it got distributed to many wallets and attempts to tumble by the time Tether could move on it.

[–] wmf 7 hours ago

Most crypto assets are operated by a smart contract that controls every transfer. So the contract can decide to not perform certain transfers.

[–] ceejayoz 7 hours ago

Not your keys, not your crypto.

Keys? Hahaha, still not your crypto.

[–] cowlevel 6 hours ago

Unless it's Monero, the only currency to be declared illegal in most countries because it's too much like cash.