Three pro-Palestine terrorist groups — including Hamas, the organization behind the surprise attacks that killed more than 250 Israelis on Saturday — have been funding their operations with tens of millions of dollars raised through cryptocurrency. Between August 2021 and June 2023, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jahid (PIJ), and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, have collectively received over $134 million in crypto, according to Israeli government seizure orders and blockchain analytics reports reviewed by The Wall Street Journal... This will be the final nail in the coffin. Expect crypto trading to formally be made illegal for US and European citizens, and for the US to unperson all individuals & entities involved in crypto worldwide, with major pressure for everyone else to do the same. The implications are extremely bearish for BTC.
As of now, BTC Investors are not worried. BTC is still rather high at $ 27000. $134 million is just a drop in the ocean. BTC's market cap is $500 billion. So investors don't have to take sleeping pills. Anyway, traders are always on alert for the coming Mother-of-all-mega-Tulipmania-Wrestlemania where BTC would drop from 5 digits to 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 to 0.1 to ... Make sure your war chest is probably funded so as to profit massively from the Mother-of-all-Trading-opportunities.
I doubt it. All is really needed to stop crypto in its current form is held Tether accountable for the biggest financial fraud the world have seen, and crypto will plummet and become irrelevant for some time. Therefore criminals will lose most of interest.
Thats one way to think about it. Another way is that the US knows exactly the amounts and who are behind the transactions instead of not knowing anything, had they used US cash or diamonds. Furthermore, efforts to "shut down" crypto will only drive it more underground, making it even more anonymous and harder to regulate
Not at the moment. I've only ever traded crypto from the long side. I do think this is a game changer. Biden's cabinet is a third Jewish and Israel has suffered its worst military disaster and humiliation in 50 years. There has already been considerable US gov / regulatory momentum building against the generally and the Binance-Tether ecosystem specifically, and I think it will now (over the next 6 months say) go into overdrive.
That's a fair point and probably a big reason why the US government has, until now, been so reticent to take decisive action despite the apparent proliferation of investigations by all manner of agencies. I think the war will tip the scales though, as the security bureaucracy concludes that reduced intelligence is an acceptable tradeoff for blocking the funding. And then, maybe you can have both: if the rump pirate underground crypto economy is reduced to say 10% of its present size, the NSA may well enjoy the same degree of visibility into that 10% as it does now.
Could you provide an previous USA accident where economic policy became influenced by foreign humility ???
Is this a serious question? The USA's mideast policy has (historically since WW2) been 50-50 about securing oil supplies and protecting Israel. We give close to $4bn a year to Israel, and almost $1.5bn to Egypt in exchange for peace and cooperation with Israel as a result of the Camp David Accords. A full offensive against crypto will cost almost nothing, it's just a question of administrative focus.
Do you see the weapons that Hamas is using? American made. Jesus... they should shut down those American companies that are making them. Also, how do you think Hamas is communicating? I bet they are using US technology.... so we need to shut down Apple and Google as well. And shit, I bet they are using American made GPS satellites as well... those also have to go.