Hannah Lucinda Smith, Istanbul The militant group Hamas is experimenting with bitcoin donations to avoid international measures against terrorist funding. The Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian group that controls Gaza, posted an online tutorial that sets out how donors could send money using the cryptocurrency, including using public computers to evade detection. The group is proscribed by most western countries, including the US and UK, meaning that anyone who is found to have sent it money could be prosecuted for funding terrorism. Organisations can have their assets seized. Cryptocurrency payments are hard to track because they do not go through the international banking system and it is possible for users to remain largely anonymous. The currency exists only as data stored on servers, not… Want to read more? Subscribe now and get unlimited digital access on web and our smartphone and tablet apps, free for your first month.
The Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas organisation, is testing the use of cryptocurrencies for large-scale funding, according to researchers at Elliptic. A new report by the Israeli think tank found that a number of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) Countries including the US and UK have publicly condemned Hamas and those financially supporting the group would be considered guilty of funding terrorism.