Circle froze $611,000 of its USDC stablecoin on Ethereum on September 26 by adding an address to the blacklist of its smart contract, an operation completed in a single transaction for a few dollars in fees. The freeze operates at the contract level itself, making the funds untransferable regardless of the wallet or exchange used. The U.S. GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, now requires all licensed payment stablecoin issuers in the United States to have the technical ability to freeze or destroy tokens upon legal order. Circle, listed on the NYSE under ticker CRCL since June 2025, applies its blacklist policy upon judicial requisition or in cases of sanctions, as seen when Tornado Cash was sanctioned in 2022 affecting 38 addresses and $75,000 in USDC. Decentralized stablecoins like USDS offer an alternative for users wishing to avoid this control mechanism, although part of USDS’s collateral remains denominated in USDC.
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