After The First Successful Bitcoin Donation, Hamas Demands More

The military wing of Hamas, Al-Qassam Brigades has requested another bitcoin donation from their supporters a few months after the first donation that we previously discussed about in our blockchain news which was able to provide the group with financial aid.

The group demands for Bitcoin in order to finance their Resistance campaign which is dubbed a terrorist organization according to many countries around the world including Israel and The United States.

The request for new bitcoin donation comes because of the financial woes the group is facing. The traditional channels through which the group receives money or other method of funding have been blocked. Hamas blamed Israel for:

‘’Israel is fighting the resistance by trying to cut off its support, but supporters of the resistance all over the world are fighting the Zionist attempts and are working to find alternative methods to support it. We call upon all supporters of the resistance and of our just cause to support it through Bitcoin, through means that we will announce soon.’’

The terrorist group is facing even more financial cuts than before after one of its biggest benefactors Qatar, announced a new approach towards the funding. According to The Jerusalem Post, Qatar will start from April to cut down on all fundings to the Hamas organization and will donate the funds to humanitarian projects.

Starting from 2012 up to 2018, Hamas is believed to have gathered about $1.1 billion from Qatar. Another major benefactor for the fundamentalist organization is believed to be Iran. But, with the sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States, Hamas could not receive a lot of money or Bitcoin from Iran because the country was severely restricted.

Since February, the fundamentalist group was able to gather $2,500 and at that time the crypto exchange Coinbase got involved into the issue. This was the case since the Israeli-based Whitestream Analytics Company claimed that Hamas’ transactions are related to wallet addresses that operate on the company wallets on the exchange.

Coinbase was later almost sued by an Israeli NGO:

‘’It has recently come to our attention that the notorious Palestinian terrorist group Hamas currently maintains an account with Coinbase, Inc. through which it is accepting donations. Therefore we are writing to notify Coinbase that knowingly providing material support or resources to Hamas is a violation of US federal criminal law, and to demand that Coinbase immediately terminate any and all accounts and services provided to Hamas.’’