Identifying, Tracking, and Valuing USDT for Litigation Matters

USDT turns up in divorces, fraud claims and insolvencies because it holds its value against the dollar and moves in minutes. Two facts help anyone trying to find it. Every transfer sits on a public ledger. And Tether, the company that issues it, can freeze the tokens at an address.

The hard part is tying an address to a person. What follows is general information, and it is no substitute for legal advice.

Where USDT sits

USDT is issued on many chains, and each one is a separate ledger. A trace on Tron tells you nothing about the same person's wallet on Ethereum.

Chain	Share of USDT supply
Tron	about 50%
Ethereum	about 40%
BNB Chain	about 5%
All others	about 5%

The figures are from DefiLlama on 2 October 2026, when about $184 billion of USDT was in circulation. So a search should start with Tron and Ethereum.

Step 1: find the holdings

You need one address to begin. It usually comes from paper the other side already produced:

• a bank statement that shows a payment to a crypto exchange
• an exchange account statement or tax form
• a screenshot of a wallet app
• an address written in an email or a chat

With one address in hand, the ledger shows every transfer in and out of it, with dates and amounts.

Coins held on an exchange are a different case. The exchange keeps customer funds in pooled wallets, so the ledger cannot show one customer's share. For that you need the exchange's own records, and those come by court order.

Step 2: follow the money

Follow each transfer out of the first address to the next one, and keep going until the funds reach an exchange deposit address. That is where a name is on file.

The Bitquery MCP server does this by question and answer. You connect it to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor and ask where the funds from an address went. It follows each hop on Tron or Ethereum and names the labeled exchanges and mixers on the path.

Three things can break a trail:

• Swaps and bridges. USDT can be traded for another token or moved to another chain. The trace has to follow the value, whatever form it takes next.
• Mixers. These pool funds from many users, which hides who paid whom.
• Exchanges with weak checks. If the funds cash out where nobody checked the customer, there is no name to ask for.

Step 3: freeze it if you can

Tether can freeze USDT at an address, and it does so at the request of the authorities. On 23 April 2026 it said it had frozen $344 million across two addresses with the U.S. government. In the same notice it said it works with more than 340 law enforcement agencies in 65 countries, and that its freezes to date exceed $4.4 billion.

A private party cannot order a freeze. The usual routes are a police report that leads to a request from the authorities, or a court order served on the exchange that holds the funds. Speed matters, because tokens that have moved on are harder to stop.

Step 4: value it

USDT aims at one dollar, but a court deals in dates. Two numbers settle the value:

• How many tokens the address held on the date that matters. The ledger gives the balance for any past date.
• The price on that date, taken from a named source. USDT trades a little above or below a dollar, so state the price used and where it came from.

Record both, with the date and the source, so the other side can check the sum.

What a court will want to see

• Control. Proof that the party controls the address: exchange records, a signed message from the wallet, or their own admission.
• A trace that can be repeated. Each step with its transaction ID, date, amount and the label on the receiving address, plus the method used.
• Someone to explain it. A witness who can walk the court through the report.

Bitquery's crypto investigation service starts with a free first assessment and produces a report for use with exchanges, the police and the courts.

If the funds were stolen from you, report it to the police first. In the United States that includes a complaint to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. Keep proof that the wallet is yours, such as a screenshot that shows the address.

Related reading

• Tracing Bitcoin transactions and addresses
• Recovering scammed bitcoin
• Crypto investigation certifications

First published in June 2024. Updated on 2 October 2026 by the Bitquery team, with AI tools helping to check the facts and redraft the text. Bitquery sells the MCP server and the investigation service named above.