The Israel-Hamas war is expected to only escalate, despite more than 2,100 lives on both sides already lost. Israeli police have announced one big move after Hamas' bloody attacks over the weekend, reporting on Tuesday that they'd frozen cryptocurrency accounts used by the terror group. Israeli police said in a statement that Hamas had "initiated a fundraising campaign on social networks, urging the public to deposit cryptocurrencies into their accounts," per Reuters. Insider notes it's not clear if the accounts were simply frozen or if the funds were actually seized, or how much the crypto is worth.
The police agency tweeted that its cyber division had coordinated with the Israeli Security Agency, the nation's Ministry of Defense, and other intel agencies to put the funds on lockdown. Police also say they had the help of Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange, per the Wall Street Journal. "Over the past few days, our team has been working in real time, around the clock, to support ongoing efforts" to help law enforcement hit back at terror financing, a Binance spokesperson said.
The Journal notes that, based on an analysis of government seizure orders and blockchain reports, it appears "three militant groups—Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and their Lebanese ally Hezbollah—received large amounts of funds through crypto" over the past year. Digital-currency wallets tied to Hamas were said to have received more than $41 million between August 2021 and this past June. In fact, Hamas is "one of the most sophisticated crypto users in the terror-finance domain," per the Journal.
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"Crypto is another string in their bow," ACAMS crypto specialist Joby Carpenter tells the paper. Quartz notes that the group's military arm has been openly soliciting bitcoin donations since at least 2019, though it ceased accepting donations that way in April after it claimed a spike in "hostile" activity toward donors. The Journal notes that "it couldn't be determined whether the crypto [Hamas] received was directly used to finance the assault" on Israel over the weekend. (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)
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