Hamas's multimillion-dollar crypto empire
Revisiting the crypto crisis
Hello Insight Monitor subscribers! I’ve been meaning to write this article for months now. But I’m glad I waited because there’s been new information coming out monthly about Hamas’s cryptocurrency empire. Okay, so it’s not quite an empire, but it is an important part of how the group gets money — particularly from their state sponsor, Iran. Estimates of Iranian funding of the group range from $80-$300 million annually (I personally think it’s on the lower end of that scale…), and Iran has to move that money to Hamas leadership somehow. While they have a lot of tools at their disposal, cryptocurrency is irresistible for moving that amount of money internationally. But it’s also subject to countermeasures, as we’ll explore below. Have a read!
Back in late 2023, a Wall Street Journal article came out claiming that terrorist groups in Israel had raised over $130 million in cryptocurrency donations. ($93 million going to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and $41 million going to Hamas.) The article said that wallets “linked” to these entities had received these funds. I was immediately skeptical – this would have amounted to a significant percentage of the group’s yearly revenues. While certainly possible, it did not seem probable, given the other ways that the group has moved money into and out of its territory.
