It didn’t take long for the media to zero in on Hamas’s cryptocurrency fundraising, notably via the stablecoin Tether. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Roger Marshall (R., Kan.) leapt at the chance to use this revelation to boost their crypto-regulation bill. But their attempt to exploit the Oct. 7 attacks to advance their legislative agenda is misguided.
There’s no evidence that crypto is used more often or more effectively than the traditional banking system to finance terrorism. Hamas acquired crypto on transparent blockchains, not via private blockchains and crypto privacy tools such as Monero or Zcash. Hamas used bitcoin and Tether, which are both traceable and easily frozen by exchanges. In fact, the terrorist organization stopped soliciting crypto donations precisely because they were so easy to trace.
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