Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, has launched a new Stablecoin Issuer Due Diligence toolkit designed for banks and compliance teams. As stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC become central to payments and treasury operations, criminals also use them to reduce currency risk when moving large sums. Elliptic says the product helps financial institutions monitor wallets and follow assets as they move across blockchains — a capability banks increasingly need given roughly $94 billion of stablecoins traded in the past 24 hours, per CoinGecko.
The SaaS toolset offers a configurable dashboard rather than a static investigative interface, with custom clustering, dynamic historical risk views and integrations aimed at fitting into banks’ existing workflows while preserving privacy, Elliptic founder James Smith said. It can assess issuers and major counterparties, flag unusual flows, and trace conversions between frozen and non-freezable tokens.
Elliptic declined to name customers but said several large banks that work with stablecoin issuers are already using the product. The tool is useful across issuers: USDT remains the largest with about $168 billion in circulation, while the largest USDT pools sit on Ethereum (~$85B) and Tron (~$78B).
Issuer controls — like the ability to freeze or blacklist addresses embedded in smart contracts — give issuers levers to disrupt illicit activity. A joint effort by Tron, Tether and TRM Labs reported freezing over $250 million of criminal assets. Still, Elliptic warns illicit actors often convert holdings to non-freezable tokens or native assets early in laundering chains.
Why this matters: banks that want to offer stablecoin services must balance commercial opportunity with evolving regulatory and compliance risk. Elliptic’s app aims to make that assessment operationally practical for compliance teams. Source: CoinDesk. Read the original coverage for full details.
