Israel Police forces have successfully seized crypto assets on the wallets of several cryptocurrency exchanges that were used by Hamas to collect donations. The operation was carried out in cooperation with various agencies, including the Defense Ministry’s National Headquarters for Combating Economic Terrorism, the Shin Bet, and crypto exchanges like Binance.
Although the police did not have direct access to the seeds or private keys of the addresses used by Hamas, they were able to freeze the funds once they were deposited on centralized exchange wallets. The goal is to transfer these frozen funds to the Israeli state treasury.
The Cyber Unit Lahav 433 of the Israeli police constantly works to identify crypto platforms used by terrorist organizations for fundraising. With the recent outbreak of war, Hamas launched a public fundraising campaign on social networks, prompting immediate action from Lahav 433 and MTL to freeze the accounts linked to Hamas.
Binance, one of the exchanges involved, cooperated with the authorities and froze the funds sent to public addresses associated with Hamas. It is unclear whether Binance has transferred these funds to Israeli authorities yet. In March, Binance was accused by the US CFTC of helping criminal organizations raise funds in a similar manner.
Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization, requiring cooperation from organizations like banks and trading platforms. The freezing of funds only affects accounts directly linked to Hamas and not those owned by Palestinian civilians.
Binance co-founder Yi He commented on WeChat, stating that Hamas is a terrorist organization while Palestine has an organized government. He clarified that the freeze targeted Hamas specifically, not Palestine as a whole.
Crypto donations to Israel continue unaffected. A charity campaign called “Crypto Aid Israel” has been launched to help Israeli civilians affected by the conflict. Over $10,000 in BTC, ETH, USDT, and other ERC-20 tokens have been collected so far through this initiative.
The initiative was started by a local Web3 collective that includes various crypto companies and organizations, such as the Israeli Blockchain Association. The funds will be used to support affected families and rebuild southern Israel in the future.
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