The Palestinian armed group Hamas launched a raid on Israel last weekend, and people are confused about where this organization obtained the funds to launch the attack.
Hamas receives tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency funding
Citing Israeli government seizure orders and blockchain analysis reports, the Wall Street Journal reported that a year before the attack, three Palestinian militant groups: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and their Lebanese ally Hezbollah, revealed A lot of money has been made through cryptocurrencies.
Analysis by cryptocurrency research firm Elliptic shows that digital currency wallets associated with PIJ received a whopping $93 million in cryptocurrency between August 2021 and June this year.
Additionally, Hamas-linked wallets received approximately $41 million during the same period, according to research from BitOK, another Israeli cryptocurrency analytics firm.
On Saturday, PIJ militants joined Hamas and crossed into Israel from Gaza, killing about 900 civilians and kidnapping at least a hundred more. Meanwhile, at least 700 Palestinians have died since Israel struck back.
All three militant groups have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government and subject to U.S. Treasury Department sanctions that restrict their access to the international banking system. Anyone who engages in transactions with these entities may face criminal prosecution and sanctions.
Western terrorism analysts and former officials said the cryptocurrency transactions underscored the difficulty the United States and Israel have in cutting off the groups' access to foreign funding. It is unclear whether the cryptocurrency they received was used directly to fund the attack. Likewise, it is not certain how much cryptocurrency Israeli authorities seized from the wallet. However, researchers say the amount found so far is likely only a fraction of that.
Exchange assists in freezing accounts
Israeli police said on Tuesday they had frozen more cryptocurrency accounts used by Hamas to solicit donations on the social network, part of an ongoing effort to find "the cryptocurrency financial infrastructure used by the terror group to fund its activities." ” Among them, the role of cryptocurrency exchanges in this regard has attracted much attention, and they are also obliged to cooperate with sanctions requests from government departments.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance recently cooperated with the Israeli authorities to freeze cryptocurrency accounts related to the Palestinian militant organization Hamas and paid all the seized funds to the Israeli treasury. A Binance exchange spokesperson said the exchange actively cooperates with law enforcement authorities, including Israel, to combat terrorist financing.
Cryptocurrency and terrorist financing
Hamas has publicly sought cryptocurrency funding since at least 2019, with reports that the group has asked supporters on its Telegram channel to donate Bitcoin. He wrote in an article:
"The reality of jihad is the expenditure of effort and energy, and money is the backbone of war."
and attached a wallet address that received approximately $30,000 in Bitcoin that year.
On the other hand, Elliptic also discovered that these three separate organizations also transferred funds between each other through cryptocurrency wallets. The company noted that PIJ has transferred more than $12 million in cryptocurrency to Hezbollah since 2021.
They primarily use USDT, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, as a medium of exchange to avoid price fluctuations. When asked about its tokens being used for terrorist operations, Tether said it remains committed to preventing terrorist involvement, including freezing relevant wallets.
However, although cryptocurrencies are a financing tool for terrorist groups, researchers who study Hamas's financing practices say that cryptocurrencies are only one of many tools used by the group to raise funds. Other channels include bringing cash from Egypt into Canada. Sa. The United States says Iran has long been a major financier of these groups, estimating regular inflows from Tehran at about $100 million a year.
This article Wall Street Journal: Militant group Hamas receives tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency funding originally appeared on Zombit.
