A new report from Coinbase Global Inc’s (NASDAQ:COIN) Special Investigations Team has revealed that three cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP — accounted for more than 98% of terror funding.
What Happened: According to the report, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) remained the most used cryptocurrency among terrorist organizations’ funding efforts over the years. Hamas, a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist group of militants, raised close to $1 million in BTC over time.
“This is likely because Hamas actively solicits donations primarily in the form of BTC on their website and related Telegram channels,” said Coinbase.
Besides Hamas, al Qaeda and ISIS also received crypto donations solely in the form of Bitcoin.
In fact, it was only in August 2020 that a Saudi-led jihadi activist movement began receiving Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), XRP (CRYPTO: XRP), and other ERC-20 tokens as donations.
According to Coinbase, the movement’s leader has advocated for the recent Taliban uprising in Afghanistan and appears to have incited violence against governments and countries, including Pakistan, Israel and the U.S. on Twitter.
When Coinbase broke down the movement’s fundraising by currency, it discovered that altcoins were the primary source: XRP accounted for 39.7% of funds, Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens accounted for close to 20%, while Bitcoin made up slightly more than 40% of funds.
Despite the anonymity associated with cryptocurrency that would likely make it an ideal choice for financing terrorist-related activities, transactions associated with it made up less than 0.05% of all illicit volume.
Price Action: On Thursday afternoon, Bitcoin was trading at $44,697.27, up 2.75%; Ethereum was trading at $3,143.81, gaining 3.96% over the same period; and XRP gained 0.90% and was trading at $0.99.
Photo: Markus Spiske on Unsplash