Your keys, but not your (stable)coins Seeing this tweet about "freezing USDT after the Iran Iraq conflict", I can't help but want to remind you, because it seems that not many stablecoin reports I've read recently mention the issue of "freezing". What are the benefits of stablecoins? I see a viewpoint that suggests stablecoins can circulate more freely. But it is estimated that friends who have recently been exposed to stablecoins have not learned that USDT and USDC can also freeze your stablecoins. Yes, these coins are in your wallet and can be frozen even if you don't move them. How was this achieved? Didn't you say 'not your keys, not your coins'? These abilities all come from account models and smart contracts. Taking ERC20 as an example, user assets are stored in state through a key value pair of address ->amount. When transferring funds, the transaction adjusts the amount of the sender and receiver separately. So if we want to freeze the USDT transfer on Ethereum, the first statement in transfer() is to check if the sender is on his blacklist https://((etherscan.io))/address/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7 code L341 And it's not just that, if it's a user's asset on the blacklist, it can also be directly destroyed through 'destroBlackFunds()': balances [_ blackListedUser]=0 https://((etherscan.io))/address/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7 code L291 And the freezing of USDT and USDC is not new anymore. A search reveals that there have been many incidents in the past and recent times where USDT and USDC have been frozen due to legal or regulatory requirements. I won't list them one by one here. So, from this perspective, stablecoins are still in your bank balance under the account model. Key is just one way for you to authenticate your identity. Transactions need to be generated based on signatures, but the decision-making power of the issuer is also very important. These reminders are not intended to FUD stablecoins, as it is indeed necessary to freeze illegal assets and there are indeed many advantages in business. I just hope to use this to reflect on whether "not your keys, not your coins" really holds true in account balance mode?