AML
"Relatively safe" doesn't mean "no risk at all". Think about it, where did you get the cryptocurrency? It didn't just come from nowhere, right? You may encounter AML (Anti Money Laundering) on all the cryptocurrencies you get any time. Nevertheless, there are also aspects such as KYC (Know Your Customer), for us users this is not something that is under our control. When we interact with a certain project, as it may be subject to relevant regulations in certain countries, our privacy information might get collected. You might not care about such privacy issues, but there are people who do.
This means that the cryptocurrency you're holding at the moment may be dirty, and if you're not lucky, it may even be frozen directly on the chain. According to public reports, Tether once freezed some USDT assets as per request from law enforcement agencies. The list of frozen funds can be found here.
You can verify if an address is frozen by Tether from the USDT contract.
https://etherscan.io/token/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7#readContract
Your BTC and ETH should never ever get frozen. If this does happen one day in the future, the belief of decentralization would crash as well. Most cryptocurrency asset frozen cases we have heard today actually happened in centralized platforms (such Binance, Coinbase, etc.) but not on the blockchain. When your cryptocurrency stays in Centralized Exchange platforms, you don't actually own any of them. When the centralized platforms freeze your account, they are actually revoking your permission to trade or withdraw. The concept of freezing could be misleading to newbies in the area. As a result, some reckless self media would spread all kinds of conspiracy theories about BitCoin.
Though your BTC and ETH assets won't be frozen on the blockchain, centralized exchanges might freeze your assets according to the requirement of AML once your assets get transferred into these platforms and they are involved in any open cases that law enforcements are working on.
To better avoid AML issues, always choose platforms and individuals with a good reputation as your counterparty. In addition, important transactions should always be verified using analyzer platforms.
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