Tether Operations Ltd. has frozen $213 million in USDT holdings spread across 48 digital wallets connected to Gurhan Kiziloz, the founder of a prominent iGaming and technology group, according to information from Brazilian authorities.
The freeze, one of the larger single-enforcement actions in the stablecoin’s history, stems from allegations of unlicensed gambling operations and cryptocurrency token sales conducted between 2021 and 2024, a period that predated Brazil’s formal regulatory framework for both activities.
No criminal charges have been filed. Brazilian authorities are pursuing the matter through civil channels.
Kiziloz did not respond to requests for comment.
The 48 USDT account freeze, executed in connection with Brazil’s gambling tax dispute, reflects close coordination between Tether’s compliance team and tax authorities, with each wallet individually identified and mapped to the disputed period. It is a working example of how deeply compliance infrastructure now sits inside stablecoin architecture, and how readily tax authorities are prepared to activate it.
The distribution of assets across 48 accounts also raises questions about how the holdings were structured during the period under scrutiny. Authorities would have required detailed on-chain analysis and cross-border regulatory cooperation to map each account back to Kiziloz before approaching Tether to act.
The action adds to Tether’s growing enforcement footprint. The company has now frozen more than $3 billion in assets since inception, including more than $180 million earlier this year. Its circulating supply stands above $187 billion, making USDT the dominant liquidity instrument in global crypto markets. That scale is precisely what makes a freeze of this nature consequential; it is not simply an account block but a removal of operational liquidity at speed.
Brazil formalised its iGaming licensing regime in 2024. Token issuance rules were similarly clarified in the same period. Both sets of rules are now being applied to activities that preceded them, raising questions about the constitutional limits of retrospective enforcement that Kiziloz’s legal team is expected to contest.
For the period between 2021 and 2024, operators serving Brazilian users had no domestic licensing pathway available. The securities framework now applied to the alleged token sales was equally unsettled. The central legal question is not whether rules were followed, but whether rules that did not yet exist can be enforced against conduct that preceded them.
Brazil’s civil courts will now determine that answer. The outcome is expected to carry implications for other operators and token issuers active in the country during the same window.
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