Israeli police have froze crypto wallets on Binance, a Palestinian militant group, to collect online donations, according to local Israeli media sources.
After Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on Saturday, Hamas has launched a fund-raising campaign across social media networks and asked donations to give cryptocurrencies, national online news outlet Ynet reported.
The Israeli cybercrime unit Lahav 433 found the accounts on Binance and then transferred them to the state treasury, Ynet said.
The media did not report the value of the seized coins.
The legal action was supported by the National Bureau for counter-terrorism financing of Israel, the Ministry of Defence, and intelligence organizations.
Binance did not respond to questions about Hamas' use of wallets on its platform. A spokeswoman for DL News said Israel's NBCTF and the Israeli National Cybercrime Unit acknowledged its contributions to global security earlier this year.
Israel's Ministry of Defence worked with the Binance investigation and compliance teams to help take down a terrorist financing operation linked to Iran's Quds Force and Hezbollah, according to a Binance blog post in June.
According to the military, Hamas militants have killed 900 Israeliies and abducted more than 150 since the weekend attack started.
According to Euronews, 187,000 Gazans have been killed and 187,000 Gazans are now displaced, according to the UN and health officials.
This is not the first time Binance has been associated with Hamas, a group that governs the Palestinian enclave of Gaza that hugged the Mediterranean Sea and has a population of more than 2 million. The US considers Hamas a terrorist organisation.
In March, the Federal Trade Commission accused Binance of failing to comply with the U.S. prohibition on doing business with Hamas. The CFTC filed a lawsuit against the exchange in 2019 alleging internal comments that Samuel Lim, then chief compliance officer, received information about Hamas-linked transactions.
Israel has long chased down crypto accounts connected to the financing of Hamas. Defence Minister Benny Gantz ordered the seizure of crypto assets from 30 wallets officials alleged to be funding Hamas in 2022.
Israeli authorities blocked 84 addresses believed to be linked to Hamas, which had received $7.7 million in crypto assets, according to Elliptic, a blockchain forensics firm.
Inbar Preiss, a Brussels-based journalist, covers crypto regulatory policy in the European Union. At inbar@dlnews.com, please note the author's email address and the phone number.