Tether, the issuer of a dollar-indexed cryptocurrency, has also frozen movements in accounts containing more than $800,000 linked to terrorism
More than 100 accounts at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, have been blocked at the request of the Israeli authorities in an attempt to curb Hamas funding, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday (17).
The number takes into account suspensions requested since the start of the extremist group’s attacks on October 7.
According to the FT report, which cited people familiar with the matter, the Israeli government has also requested information on another 200 cryptocurrency accounts, mostly on Binance.
Israeli police said last week that they had frozen cryptocurrency accounts used to solicit donations for Hamas on social media.
The work to identify the accounts linked to Hamas, Binance says, has the company’s cooperation. Binance told the Financial Times that it had “blocked” a “small number” of accounts on the platform, but did not detail the exact number.
Also according to the FT, an unnamed Binance employee said that the company is seeking to identify “all Binance customers who have had contact” with each cryptocurrency wallet address that Hamas publicizes asking for donations.
Cryptocurrencies mostly operate outside the traditional financial system and the wallet addresses are pseudonymous, which makes it difficult to trace who is behind the transactions.
In February, a survey by US blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs claimed that the stablecoin Tether (USDT) was the “currency of choice” for terrorist financing.
Tether claims that it is collaborating with Israel’s National Bureau for Countering the Financing of Terrorism (NBCTF) “to combat cryptocurrency-financed terrorism and war”.
On Monday (16), the company said it had frozen transactions from 32 crypto-asset wallet addresses containing more than $873,000, claiming they were linked to “terrorism and wars” in Israel and Ukraine.
Digital assets have been widely used by Ukraine since the invasion by Russia last year, with Kiev raising more than $100 million in cryptocurrencies after appeals for donations.
Pro-Russian groups have also used cryptocurrencies for funding in eastern Ukraine, as reported by blockchain research firm Chainalysis last year.