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Hamas' Military Wing to Stop Accepting Bitcoin Donations: Report

The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades said the move is to protect donors from harm.

Updated Apr 28, 2023, 1:36 p.m. Published Apr 28, 2023, 11:19 a.m.

Fighters of Ezz al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas (Fatima Shbair/Getty Images)

The military arm of the Palestinian militant group Hamas will stop accepting donations in bitcoin (BTC), news outlet Shehab reported on Thursday.

The outlet cited a message posted to a Telegram group believed to be run by the military wing Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and U.K., has been accepting bitcoin donations for some time, apparently using platforms like Binance to launder proceeds until the wallet was frozen.

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The Brigades said in the Telegram post that it will halt bitcoin donations for "the safety of the donors ... especially in light of the intensification of the prosecution and the doubling of the hostile effort against anyone who tries to support the resistance through this currency."

In 2021, Israeli officials seized 84 digital wallets suspected of belonging to Hamas that held a mix of crypto assets including BTC, DOGE, ADA, XLM, XRP and ETH worth millions of dollars.

Palestine Hamas Bitcoin Donations

Sandali Handagama

Sandali Handagama is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor for policy and regulations, EMEA. She is an alumna of Columbia University's graduate school of journalism and has contributed to a variety of publications including The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Nation and Popular Science. Sandali doesn't own any crypto and she tweets as @iamsandali