Crypto is a small slice of Hamas’ funding — but it’s deadly
FTX cryptocurrency empire, another reckoning for digital currencies is underway: Governments around the world are intensifying their crackdown on sources of funding for terrorist groups — including crypto — after Hamas’s bloody attack in Israel that claimed more than 1,400 lives and led to retaliatory attacks that have killed thousands.
Crypto is a small but deadly slice of overall terrorism funding: Research by analytics firm Elliptic in 2021 estimated that wallets linked to Hamas’ military wing had received more than $7.3 million in crypto, including around $40,000 in Dogecoin, the dog-themed memecoin favored by Elon Musk. These sums aren’t much compared with the $100 million that Iran sends annually to Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups or with Qatar’s $360 million in aid for Gaza, or the approximately $300 million Hamas gets via business taxation and extortion estimated by the Washington Institute’s Matthew Levitt.
But small amounts can make a difference in an era of low-cost, low-tech attacks. An estimate of the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks by the New York Times found they cost Al-Qaeda half a million dollars but cost the US $3.3 trillion.
Governments are right to take crypto seriously — it allows for large sums to be moved around the world with a high degree of anonymity (albeit leaving a transaction trail) and is part of the wider tapestry of terrorist finance, often used in conjunction with social media, remittances and pre-paid cards. Funding tends to pick up during times of conflict, and Hamas’ halt on Bitcoin donations, announced in April, might not be forever — Australia’s national financial crime agency this week flagged appeals on Telegram for crypto donations for Hamas, according to an AFR report.
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