He Yi: Law Enforcement Can Freeze Discounted USDT on Binance

On November 8, 2026, Binance co-founder He Yi warned in a Chinese-language post that law-enforcement freezes can lock funds after users deposit discounted USDT on Binance. She said Binance has no unfreeze authority over money that law enforcement has locked.

He Yi, Binance’s chief customer service officer, told users not to send discounted USDT or other suspicious-origin funds to the platform. She framed the warning as a compliance issue, not a new product rule or a general indictment of below-par stablecoin trades.

What funding patterns did He Yi flag?

He Yi asked users to keep these funding stories away from Binance:

• “Discount U from friends.”
• Coins a relative sends on-chain.
• Money framed as Myanmar business proceeds.
• Accounts collected in Cambodia.
• A friend’s funds that only “pass through” an account.

Here, U means USDT, the token involved in the first scenario. Someone offers Tether below its usual dollar value, and a buyer sends it to an exchange.

Why does a discount not remove custody risk?

A below-par USDT offer can be a sales pitch for liquidity, but it can also move tokens with a questionable history onto a cleaner account. He Yi said related addresses often carry compliance marks before the funds arrive. Once the deposit lands, an enforcement hold can leave the balance inaccessible even if USDT continues trading near a dollar.

Her warning described a sequence rather than a new blacklist: accept discounted Tether, send it to an exchange, and take on the compliance history attached to the address trail. That sequence makes provenance a gating condition at the exchange deposit gateway, not merely a negotiation over the token’s price.

What can Binance do after an enforcement freeze?

He Yi said cases are usually complex, with timelines that can run long. Binance cannot unfreeze money that law enforcement has locked, so a customer-service ticket cannot guarantee release. The operational result is a split between market price and account access: USDT can trade near a dollar while the deposited balance remains unavailable.

Issuer blacklists and exchange freezes address different controls. The warning focused on the exchange side: the deposit path, address history and which authority can authorize the release of funds. That distinction matters because the token’s dollar peg does not decide whether users can access the balance after deposit.

What did He Yi rule out?

The post did not publish a new address blacklist, identify a single case or amount, or name a jurisdiction. He Yi also did not claim that every discounted USDT trade is criminal. Her narrower point was that the listed origin stories are compliance red flags, linked wallets are often already tagged, and an exchange freeze is not an ordinary support decision.

He said Binance runs strict global compliance standards and that its compliance team can readily identify these patterns. The post disclosed no scoring rules, affected-account count, enforcement agency, or frequency of permanent locks versus temporary reviews.

He closed by asking for mutual understanding and mutual respect. The post did not establish an appeal route or release timetable. It placed the compliance burden on users to keep the listed origin stories out of exchange wallets.

What happens next?

The enforcement window remains open-ended. He Yi said cases can run long, and the post provided no release deadline or timetable for ending enforcement holds. For market structure, address-level compliance remains the practical gate between discounted on-chain USDT and usable exchange liquidity.