Jeremy Allaire (제레미 알레어), chief executive of Circle, said it is very unlikely USDC would be used for Iran’s Strait of Hormuz tolls.

On April 13, blockchain media outlet BeInCrypto reported that Allaire said at a press briefing in Seoul that sanctioned regimes would not want to use assets that are likely to be frozen immediately.

Allaire drew a line when asked whether Iran’s Revolutionary Guards could receive strait tolls in USDC. He said Circle operates a very high level of compliance infrastructure and works closely with law enforcement agencies and sanctions authorities. Citing public research by the United Nations and blockchain forensics firms, he said sanctioned actors tend to prefer other stablecoins over USDC, but did not name specific tokens.

He said it is very unlikely that a sanctioned regime would choose a means that has a very high likelihood of having assets frozen immediately. He stressed that because USDC promotes a regulation-friendly structure, it is unlikely to be used as a sanctions-evasion tool.

Allaire also explained Circle’s response to the Drift Protocol hack that occurred earlier this month. At the time, the attacker transferred more than $230 million in stolen USDC from Solana to Ethereum over 6 hours, and total losses were tallied at $285 million. Circle faced criticism for not freezing the funds immediately during the process.

Allaire made clear that Circle cannot freeze wallets based solely on its own judgment. He said the company does not decide on its own which path is right, and that a structure in which a private company takes on such judgments creates a moral dilemma. Under the current system, he said, freezes are possible only with instructions from law enforcement agencies or courts.

He acknowledged there is a gap in the current system. Circle is calling for the inclusion of a safe-harbor provision in the U.S. CLARITY Act that would allow issuers to preemptively freeze funds in extreme situations. Allaire said that authority should be written into regulation, not left to a company’s arbitrary judgment.

On another issue in the CLARITY Act, a provision banning stablecoin yield, he said it would not be a direct hit. The bill includes measures to block schemes that pay interest simply for holding stablecoins. Allaire said the GENIUS Act already bans stablecoin issuers from paying interest to holders.

Instead, he said the impact would be concentrated on distribution businesses such as exchanges and wallets. They would still be able to offer activity-based rewards, but it would become difficult to promote stablecoin holdings as a substitute for bank deposits while attaching interest. Calling the controversy exaggerated, Allaire said most stablecoin holders globally do not receive rewards in the first place. He also mentioned that about half of the world’s $120 trillion M2 money supply remains in cash or non-interest-bearing accounts.

Allaire’s comments reaffirmed that USDC is unlikely to be used as a tool to evade sanctions, while also exposing a regulatory gap over how far issuers can intervene in emergencies such as hacks. Ultimately, trust in the stablecoin market appears likely to depend not only on regulatory friendliness but also on a clear framework for standards and authority in crisis response.