Israeli authorities confiscate cryptocurrency wallets linked to Hamas movement

Yesterday, July 7, Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Gantz signed an order to confiscate 84 cryptocurrency wallets associated with the Hamas terrorist movement.

Among them are not only Bitcoin wallets, but also Ethereum addresses, Dogecoin and others. Most of these wallets are linked to seven Palestinian citizens who have been seen interacting with Hamas, according to Israel’s National Bureau for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.

Some of these wallets are still completely anonymous, and some are associated only with e-mail addresses, presumably belonging to terrorists. According to the analytical company Elliptic, $ 7.7 million in cryptocurrencies were transferred to the confiscated wallets – mainly in Tether stablecoins and bitcoins. However, perhaps not all of these addresses are related to terrorism:

“Some addresses are part of large services and not all of these funds may be associated with terrorism. When calculating funds, we excluded from the list addresses that are deposit addresses of cryptocurrency exchanges. ”

Elliptic representatives declined to disclose to which exchanges these addresses belong. In addition, it is not yet clear how exactly the confiscation was carried out – whether the private keys from the wallets were obtained, or it is about something else.

It is worth noting that in the order of the Israeli Ministry of Defense there is a clause that the owner of the funds can send a request for the return of cryptocurrencies to the department. Of course, the funds will be returned only after proving the legitimacy of their origin and the lack of ties with terrorists.

Recently it became known that amendments to the legislation on the possibility of confiscating digital assets are being prepared in Russia.

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