Earlier to the court’s decision, Israeli officials were only permitted to collect virtual currencies with direct connections to terrorism, not other monies stored within the same wallets. The authorities took $750,000 from the wallets in December 2021.
Since 2007, Hamas has been the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip in Palestine. Numerous nations and global blocs, such as the United States, European Union, Israel, and the United Kingdom, designate Hamas as a terrorist group.
Hamas started soliciting its followers in January 2019 to contribute donations via Bitcoin (BTC) to circumvent sanctions and monetary alienation. On July 9, 2021, Gantz issued an order permitting security officers to confiscate cryptocurrency accounts allegedly associated with the terrorist faction of Hamas. During that period, authorities reported that the accounts held Tether (USDT), Ether (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), XRP, Binance Coin (BNB), Zcash (ZEC), and Litecoin (LTC), among other cryptocurrencies.
Israeli investigators confiscated 30 cryptocurrency wallets from 12 cryptocurrency exchange accounts connected to Hamas in February. The actual amount of the stolen digital currencies was not made public. It has been demonstrated that cryptography has a very limited part in terrorist organization funding. The blockchain intelligence company Chainalysis concluded in early 2022 that just a tiny fraction of crypto money is being utilized for illegal conduct.