Researchers Discover That Cryptocurrency Was Used To Fund Palestinian Militants

Researchers Discover That Cryptocurrency Was Used To Fund Palestinian Militants

Time Stamp: October 13, 2023 12:30 PM
Source Node: 2934056

Tyler Cross Tyler Cross
Published on: October 13, 2023 Researchers Discover That Cryptocurrency Was Used To Fund Palestinian Militants

With so much money being moved into the hands of Palestinian militants, many were left wondering about how they were able to obtain their funding.

This weekend saw an abrupt and grim beginning of a war between Palestinian militants working under the Hamas organization and Israel. The latter country declared a state of war after a large-scale terrorist attack was carried out on Israeli citizens.

Researchers found that tens of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency has been sent to accounts associated with Hamas. The crypto has been linked to Hezbollah and the prominent Russian cryptocurrency website exchange, Garantez, and the decentralized exchange Sunswap.

Hezbollah is a Lebanon-based political organization that’s secured billions in cryptocurrency. Most of the client’s accounts that have been seized are associated with the Tron cryptocurrency blockchain.

Investigations led by law enforcement have found a total of $94 million worth of cryptocurrency after seizing the client accounts of 67 people associated with the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group.

However, cryptocurrency wallets can be harder to seize and track than traditional cash-smuggling methods. Only 26 Tron wallets were claimed. Chinese-based crypto company, Binance, helped freeze the accounts as well.

These seized wallets are only a fraction of the overall cryptocurrency wallets being used to fund Hamas, which has been raising cryptocurrency through various channels since 2018.

“As for the other addresses, they remain active. Moreover, despite the issuance of the Seizure Order, they have not been subjected to any form of blocking,” explains researchers with BitOK.

Some are worried that this will cause countries like the US and the UK to decrease funding for cryptocurrency projects, tying the concept to funding illegal terrorist groups. While there has been a noticeable decrease in cryptocurrency funding, these decreases have mostly come from the rise of scams and fraudulent cryptocurrency exchanges.

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