Tether to Freeze Sanctioned Addresses Amid Venezuela’s Crypto Oil Exports
Tether has announced plans to freeze addresses associated with sanctioned entities, following reports that Venezuela’s state-run oil company was using the stablecoin to bypass sanctions.
The move comes after an exclusive Reuters report revealed that PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, has been using cryptocurrencies to facilitate crude oil and fuel exports.
The U.S. Treasury Department has demanded that PDVSA customers and providers wind down transactions by May 31 due to Venezuela’s failure to implement electoral reforms.
According to the report, the reimposed sanctions will make it more difficult for Venezuela to increase its oil product and export, as companies will require U.S. authorizations to do business with the South American nation.
PDVSA has been transitioning its oil sales to USDT to mitigate the risk of funds being frozen in foreign bank accounts as new sanctions take effect. Reuters’ sources also claim that PDVSA has reworked its spot oil deals in 2024 to a contract model that requires prepayment for exported cargo in USDT.
READ MORE: Thai Authorities to Crack Down on Unlicensed Crypto Exchanges
Additionally, the report suggests that the Venezuelan state-run oil firm requires new customers looking to conduct oil transactions to hold cryptocurrency in a digital wallet.
Companies seeking to resume business with PDVSA following a six-month licensing approval from the U.S. in October 2023 had to resort to intermediaries to carry out the cryptocurrency payment requirements.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
