A frozen address is one whose token balance cannot be transferred because the token's issuer applied a control at the contract level. The balance stays visible to anyone reading the chain, which is what makes the situation confusing the first time you meet it: the funds appear to be there because they are, and they still cannot move. This is a different state from an address that is merely flagged in screening data, where transfers work normally and the consequence is that counterparties may decline them.
Three states get confused with each other, and the responses to them have nothing in common.
An address is frozen when the issuer of the token has acted on it. Tether's Terms of Service reserve the right to freeze Tether Tokens held by a user and, on suspected prohibited use, to blacklist digital token addresses; Circle's USDC Terms reserve the right to block USDC addresses and to block transfers to and from an address on chain. Native coins such as BTC and ETH have no issuer and therefore no equivalent control.
An address is flagged when screening data connects it to a risk category. Transfers still work. What changes is that a regulated counterparty may decline the value or open a review.
An account is restricted when a venue limits what you can do inside it. Nothing on chain has happened; the venue is exercising its own terms.
Because the three states demand different actions and the wrong one wastes the window in which the right one would have worked. A P2P trader who thinks a flagged address is frozen may release goods for a payment that will be refused downstream; one who thinks a frozen address is merely flagged will spend days appealing to an exchange that never touched it.
Check the counterparty address before the deal — three free checks a day in the Telegram bot, verdict in seconds, no signup.
Issuer freeze status is reported as its own named fact in the result, separately from the risk categories, and both sit beside the verdict — CLEAN, LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH or CRITICAL — with a recommendation of Proceed, Caution, Review or Reject and the decision drivers written out. Keeping the two apart is deliberate: one is a technical state of the token, the other is what the address has been connected to.
Desks screening deposits run this in the workspace, filter cases by category and export a signed report per decision. Plans are on the pricing page.
No. BTC has no issuer able to act on a balance, so there is no contract-level freeze. A Bitcoin address can be flagged in screening data, which is a different problem with a different answer.
That pattern points to an issuer-level freeze or block on a token balance. The chain still displays the tokens because they exist; the contract refuses the transfer.
No. A flagged address transfers normally, and the consequence is that regulated counterparties may decline the funds or open a review. A frozen address cannot transfer at all.
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Paste it into the Telegram bot. The result names issuer freeze status and any risk categories, free, three checks a day.
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