Israeli Court Orders Seizure Of 150 Banned Crypto Wallets

Because to a ruling reached by a court in Israel, more than 150 bitcoin wallets that have been deemed to have potential links to the funding of terrorist groups will likely have their entire balances wiped out as a consequence of this verdict.

It has been reported that the Magistrate Court in Tel Aviv has handed down a judgement that grants the Israeli government permission to confiscate all of the cryptocurrency that is stored in the more than 150 digital wallets that it has banned due to the suspicion that they are aiding terrorist organizations. The reasoning behind the ban is that the government believes that these wallets are providing support to terrorist organizations.

On the 18th of December, local Israeli media reported that Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz stated that the court’s order from the 15th of December has already enabled police to take an additional $33,500 from digital wallets that are related to the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas. This information was reported by the Israeli Defense Minister.

Prior to the verdict of the court, the only digital assets that the Israeli police were legally entitled to gather were those that had direct linkages to terrorist operations. They did not have the authority to confiscate any more cash that could have been included in the same wallets.

The authorities seized hold of the wallets in December of 2021 and withdrew $750,000 from each of them at that time.

Gantz issued an order on July 9, 2021, that permitted security personnel to seize bitcoin accounts that were suspected of having ties to the militant wing of the Hamas group. Gantz’s order authorized the seizure of cryptocurrency accounts.

In addition, Israeli detectives were successful in seizing 30 bitcoin wallets and 12 exchange accounts tied to Hamas in the month of February.

After the seizure, the true market worth of the cryptocurrency assets that were stolen was not disclosed to the public.

It has been shown that the use of cryptocurrencies in the process of funding terrorist groups is quite little. [C]ryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum play a very small role.

Early in 2022, the business that specializes in blockchain analytics known as Chainalysis came to the realization that just a minuscule portion of crypto currency was being used for illicit activities.