Hamas records surge in Bitcoin donation amid the Israel-Palestine conflict as a way to circumvent economic sanctions as we can see more in our latest Bitcoin news today.

Hamas saw an uptick in BTC donations during the latest conflict as BTC is often used to bypass economic sanctions for parties that are blocked from traditional finance rails. As per the senior Hamas official, the Palestine militant group Hamas records a surge in BTC donations since the armed conflict outburst last month. The crypto market allowed Hamas that rules the Gaza strip and is considered a terrorist group, to bypass international sanctions. The official noted:

“There was definitely a spike [in Bitcoin donations]. Some of the money gets used for military purposes to defend the basic rights of the Palestinians.”

Given that Hamas is seen as a terrorist organization, it was locked out of the global financial systems and as a result, it turned to more innovative funding ways like crypto donations. The Hamas official didn’t declare exactly how much BTC was donated but said that its proportion of overall revenue is growing. What’s more, to it is that the group is not turning to Bitcoin for the first time. In 2019, the Al-Qassam Brigades launched an online call for BTC donations and the group boasted that the donations were untraceable and will be used for violent causes as the DOJ of US said.

Islamic State supporters experiment with presence on BCM Messenger, an end-to-end encrypted messenger based on blockchain technology. In this example ISIS supporters share latest photo gallery showing a recent attack in Central Africa pic.twitter.com/yxFhl6iK2g

— jihadoScope (@JihadoScope) December 8, 2019

The crypto initiative came alongside other campaigns from the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. The US Department of Justice announced that it had dismantled three terror financing campaigns and seized millions of dollars in more than 300 crypto accounts, four FB pages, and four websites. The groups that were targeted have to go about their calls for BTC donations very carefully and in Hamas’ case, the military wing turned to Telegram as it is an encrypted messaging service. Other groups like the Islamic State turned to a now-defunct anonymous messaging app BCM.

Telegram requires a phone number before a user registers an account and before BCM closed down, the users were not required to provide more ID info to use the service. The users were able to create groups of up to 100,000 people as BCM didn’t comment on the issue in the past. Earlier this year, one French donor paid over $500,000 in BTC to far-right activists and internet personalities who took part in Capitol Hill riots back in January.

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Source: https://www.dcforecasts.com/bitcoin-news/hamas-records-surge-in-btc-donations-amid-palestine-conflict/