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Gaza’s Ruling Group Hamas Implements New Crypto Tactics to Evade Authorities

By Natalie Wu | May 3, 2019
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Gaza's Ruling Group Hamas Implements New Crypto Tactics to Evade Authorities

Hamas military wing, the ruling authority in Palestine’s Gaza Strip, has reportedly made moves to prevent authorities from tracking its crypto financing flow.

According to researchers from blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic. Taking control over Gaza since 2007, Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization and being financially isolated by a number of countries and international blocs — including the United States and the European Union. However, there are some countries that do not perceive Hamas as a terrorist entity, among those are Russia, Turkey, and China.

The organization has its own social service arm called “Dawah” and a militant faction “Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades,”. Earlier this year, the mentioned militant faction has come up with a bitcoin fundraising appeal as a strategy to combat financial isolation.

As Reuters reported, Elliptic research crew has pointed out the changes in al-Qassam Brigades’ crypto fundraising mechanism recently.

Accordingly, contributors who were initially called to donate to a sole bitcoin wallet address are now adapted to have a unique wallet address every time they make a donation transaction. The report explains that having multiple unique addresses allegedly makes it more complicated for the investigative authorities to red-flag any crypto wallet, compared to when there was only one specific wallet.

It was reported by Elliptic that from March 26 to April 16, Hamas multiple wallets received about 0.6 bitcoin, equal to $3,099 at press time. Since the beginning, the campaign of al-Qassam Brigades was claimed to bring the group around $7,400.

Though refusing to include a major part of its findings’ details, Elliptic was believed to successfully track these addresses’ transactions via two unspecified crypto exchanges in Asia. At the same time, the question of whether the crypto had been converted to fiat currencies was not clarified as well.

Previously in February, Israeli blockchain analysts company was reported to find trail of bitcoin donations to Hamas. Accordingly, the number of donations Hamas raised was estimated at $2,500 within the first two days of wallet address publication.

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