Binance co-founder He Yi has cautioned users against depositing discount USDT or other funds of suspicious origin onto the exchange, saying such deposits risk being frozen by law enforcement in actions the company cannot reverse.

In a Chinese-language post published on November 8, 2026, He Yi said flagged addresses are often marked before tainted funds ever reach the platform. Once such a deposit lands, she warned, it can face a law-enforcement freeze — and Binance has no authority to lift it. A cheap stablecoin handoff, in other words, is not a bargain if the next stop is a locked balance.

What He Yi Told Users Not to Deposit

He Yi, who serves as Binance's co-founder and chief customer service officer, listed the scenarios she wants kept off the exchange: “discount U” offered by friends; coins a relative sends on-chain; money framed as proceeds from Myanmar business; accounts collected in Cambodia; and a friend's funds that merely “pass through” an account. That class of money should not be moved onto Binance, she wrote. The Myanmar and Cambodia references land against a well-documented backdrop: United Nations human-rights investigators have in recent years reported large-scale online fraud operations across parts of both countries.

She framed the warning as a matter of compliance rather than a new product rule. Binance operates strict global compliance standards, she said, and the patterns she described are easy for the compliance team to spot. Related addresses are frequently already tagged before tainted funds hit the platform — a form of pre-screening that is standard anti-money-laundering practice across major exchanges, which check incoming deposits against flagged-address databases tied to on-chain history. After a deposit arrives, the money can face an enforcement freeze. Cases are usually complex and timelines run long, and Binance, she said, has no power to unfreeze them.

She closed the post with a short appeal: mutual understanding and mutual respect.

In Chinese crypto shorthand, “U” stands for USDT, the dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Tether. The scheme she described works like this: someone offers Tether below its usual dollar value, the buyer transfers it to an exchange, and the address trail already carries a compliance flag. The balance can then sit under a law-enforcement hold that the venue cannot lift on its own.

The Discount USDT Freeze Risk, Explained

The recurring question the warning raises: when a dollar token changes hands below face value, what does that price actually buy?

Not a cleaner balance, according to He Yi's account. It often buys someone else's problem. A below-par USDT offer can be a sales pitch for liquidity — or a way to push tainted tokens onto a cleaner account. Her point is narrower than a moral lecture: once such funds sit on Binance, a freeze can come from enforcement, not from a customer-service ticket the exchange can reverse.

Her post also stops short of certain claims. She did not publish a new blacklist of addresses. She did not name a specific case, amount, or jurisdiction. She did not say every discounted USDT trade is criminal. What she said is that the listed origin stories are compliance red flags, that related wallets are often already tagged, and that Binance cannot unfreeze money locked by law enforcement.

For readers who treat USDT as on-chain cash, the stake here is custody risk, not the peg. The token can still trade near a dollar while a deposit sits frozen on an exchange. Issuer blacklists and exchange freezes answer different questions; He Yi's warning sits on the exchange side — the deposit path, the address history, and who holds the keys to release.

Unknowns remain. The post does not say how many accounts are currently stuck under such holds, which agencies issue the freezes, or how often a “friend's discount U” arrangement ends in a permanent lock rather than a temporary review. It also does not spell out every rule Binance uses to score those scenarios. What it does put on record is clear enough for a daily wire: He Yi told users to keep discount USDT and similar suspicious-origin funds off Binance because flagged money can face enforcement freezes the exchange cannot undo.

The dollar promise is the same question it always was. This warning's answer concerns who can stop that dollar after it lands in an exchange wallet.