Conduit, a payments company that moves money for business clients, sued Tether in a New York federal court on Tuesday. It says Tether froze $2.76 million of its USDT more than a year ago and has never explained why.

The money sits in its treasury wallet, where Conduit keeps the funds it uses to pay out. Conduit wants the court to order Tether to restore its access. It says the missing money has slowed payments to its clients, because a company that moves other people's dollars needs working capital it can reach.

A relay of The Block's report adds that the wallet was never flagged by Brazilian police. We haven't read the complaint, and Tether's side isn't in the reporting we've seen.

Tether issues USDT, a token meant to stay worth one US dollar, and it can freeze any address that holds it. A frozen address still shows its balance but can't send it, and law enforcement requests are the usual reason. USDT is the largest stablecoin, about $184 billion in circulation according to DefiLlama, which is more than half of the $314 billion of stablecoins it tracks. Circle can freeze USDC, the second largest, in the same way.

Keeping USDT in your own wallet doesn't change that. The freeze acts on the token, wherever it is stored. Conduit's $2.76 million is about 0.0015% of all USDT.

No court has ruled yet. A ruling would show what a holder can ask a judge to do when the issuer locks its money and gives no reason. If you run payments or payroll on USDT, the question for today is how much of your working capital sits in one token that its issuer can lock.

Roman Storm, a developer of the Tornado Cash mixing service, is back in the news two days after FinCEN withdrew its own mixer proposal. The Justice Department has filed a new paper this week aimed at his challenge to where he was tried. His motion for acquittal is still pending, and we haven't read the filing.

A jury convicted Storm last August of running an unlicensed money-transmitting business. It deadlocked on the money laundering and sanctions charges, and prosecutors chose to retry him on those. The retrial is set for 26 April 2027.

So one part of the government is pulling back a rule while another keeps prosecuting. For anyone who writes or funds open-source code, this is the case that tests whether publishing software that moves money counts as running a money business.

Citigroup raised its 12-month bitcoin target from $82,000 to $113,000 in a note published last Thursday, according to a crypto newsletter's summary of it. We haven't seen the note. It lifted its ether target from $2,240 to $3,028, a smaller rise, because it expects big buyers to reach for bitcoin first.

Citi gives two reasons. One is continued buying by bitcoin ETFs, about $5 billion more over a year in its forecast, which it says would absorb about a third of newly mined coins. The other is the US Treasury's bond buybacks.

The old $82,000 target sat below where bitcoin trades now, so a raise was nearly forced. The new one is roughly a third above this morning's price. It's one bank's forecast, and no buyer has agreed to pay that price.