On-chain investigator ZachXBT linked a single Tron address to a $120.2 million USDT inflow on June 11 that fed both off-ramps and an outsized bid for Monero. Roughly $12 million moved to KuCoin deposit addresses, $8 million to instant exchanges, and another $8 million was bridged through Near Intents to Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The same entity layered in large XMR buy orders, helping drive Monero from $330 to $420 in short order. Tether has since blacklisted a related address still holding $72 million in USDT, freezing those funds in place.
Why it matters
The flow pattern is a textbook template for the stablecoin-fuelled altcoin squeeze: a single address absorbs liquidity, fans it across centralized and decentralized off-ramps, and uses the residual to bid a privacy coin into a vertical move. Monero's market structure is thin enough that a coordinated bid of this size can move price sharply without showing obvious wash-trading footprints on the order book.
Market impact
The blacklist is the harder constraint. $72M sitting in a frozen USDT address cannot be moved to an exchange or off-ramp, which forces the entity behind the wallet to either abandon the funds or attempt peeling-off transactions small enough to slip past Tether's compliance team. The structural read for the rest of the market: stablecoin issuers are now willing to react in near-real-time to public on-chain attribution, not just to law enforcement requests.
Frequently asked questions
-
What did ZachXBT link the $120M USDT wallet to?
A single Tron address received $120.2M in USDT on June 11, then routed funds to KuCoin deposits, instant exchanges, and Near Intents bridges while placing large buy orders in Monero that helped push XMR from $330 to $420.
-
How much USDT did Tether freeze?
Tether blacklisted a related address still holding $72 million in USDT, leaving those funds frozen and unspendable at any venue that runs Tether's compliance list.
-
Why did Monero's price spike from this activity?
Monero's order book is thin relative to majors, so a single coordinated buyer placing large XMR orders can move price sharply without leaving obvious wash-trading footprints on the book.
-
What is Near Intents and how was it used here?
Near Intents is a bridge-and-swap primitive on the Near network that lets a depositor specify an outcome (here, BTC or ETH) without manually routing the cross-chain leg. The wallet used it to move roughly $8M of the USDT into Bitcoin and Ethereum.
-
Can the entity behind the blacklisted address still access the $72M?
In practice, no. Any attempt to move frozen USDT to a Tether-compliant venue or DEX will be rejected, forcing the entity to either abandon the funds or attempt small peeling transactions that may still trip compliance filters.
WuBlockchain