How did Hamas fund the entire Hamas attack on Israel's territory over the weekend? The Wall Street Journal said that three groups - Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas - received large sums of money through crypto. The agency said in its report that the government had frozen cryptocurrency accounts used to solicit such donations.
Elliptic analyst Elliptic said that PIJ received $93 million in crypto between August 2021 and June this year. BitOK said that wallets linked to Hamas received about $47 million in the same time period.
The WSJ said that the U.S. has designated Hamas, the PIJ and Hezbollah as foreign terrorist groups, leading to sanctions by the Treasury Department that limited their access to the international banking system. They chose unregulated cryptocurrency for the money they received.
It could not be determined whether the amount they received was directly used to finance Saturday's assault. The exact amount of money seized from crypto wallets is not clear.
Israeli police said the motive behind the freezing of the crypto accounts is to stop the flow of money that Hamas raises through social media campaigns.
The terrorist organisation has launched a fundraising campaign on social networking sites, urging the public to deposit cryptocurrencies into their accounts, police said in a statement.
Also read about an unidentified man who bought Israeli-Bound IDF reserve seats in Bulk, according to Israeli media.
The report did not provide any further details of how many accounts were frozen, nor the value of crypto seized.
With crypto, users can bypass banks by instant transfer of tokens between digital wallets, which are usually held at a cryptocurrency exchange.
For transactions, Hamas and other groups mainly used the stablecoin tether, which is pegged to the US dollar, minimizing the volatility that affects other tokens, said the WSJ. When asked about the use of its tokens, Tether said it remains committed to deterring terrorist involvement, including by freezing related wallets.