News About Crypto Donations For Misleading Hamas, Here's What Crypto Figures Say!

The crypto community has criticized reports regarding crypto donations for Hamas. (Photo; Doc. The Jerusalem Post)

JAKARTA - The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has drawn criticism from the crypto community for providing misleading information about Hamas crypto funding. WSJ reported on October 10 that Hamas earned around 90 million US dollars (Rp1.4 trillion) in cryptocurrencies to fund attacks on Israel. This report drew negative reactions from crypto opponents, who considered the industry a means of criminals.

Several US lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, sent letters to the White House and the Treasury Department based on the WSJ report. They expressed concern about the national security threat posed by crypto because it was likely used to support terrorism.

However, the crypto community denied the WSJ report and claimed that the reported terror funding was too high 99%. Sam Total, principal market analyst at Swan Bitcoin, said that the WSJ had miscalculated the exchange trading volume for Hamas addresses. He cited a Chainalysis report showing that funds entering terrorist addresses were much lower.

He urged the WSJ to withdraw the report because it could be used by politicians who want to attack the crypto industry. A similar opinion was also expressed by Nic Carter, one of the crypto figures, who said that the WSJ did not want to withdraw their report even though it had been confirmed. He called the report a journalistic failure as bad as the New York Times (NYT) which misreported rockets in Gaza.

Sam Lyman, director of public policy at Riot Platforms, a Bitcoin (BTC) mining company, added that the WSJ did not mention that Hamas' crypto fundraising failed in total. He said the fundraising actually harmed Hamas for exposing their donors to the law and providing data to the US and Israel.

Meanwhile, CryptoSlate reports that Coinbase, one of the largest crypto trading platforms, argues that blockchain technology can help fight terrorism financing. Coinbase emphasizes that terror financing still uses more traditional financial systems than crypto.