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A recent Wall Street Journal report, among others, claim that terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah are arranging their funding through the use of cryptocurrency.
Smear campaign?
That mainstream media can still be attempting to blacken crypto by continuing to state that it is being used for money laundering and terrorist financing, is becoming rather puerile.
Of course, there is bound to be some use of crypto, but compared with the dollar, this is likely to be a drop of water in the barrel by comparison. The Wall Street Journal article claims that $41 million in crypto was used by Hamas, while $91 million was used to fund Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
This is like claiming that a drug dealer bought his latest shipment of drugs with U.S. dollars, and therefore the dollar is a dirty currency and should be sanctioned.
Mainstream media appears to still be using the strategy of if you throw enough mud at crypto and continue to do so, surely some of it will stick and the name of crypto will perhaps be tarnished in the eyes of ordinary people, thereby giving the government more power to levy even heavier regulations and restrictions.
Is this the real reason?
The real reason behind the constant barrage of negativity with crypto is that governments fear private money. If the people start protesting against the persistent debasement of their currency by buying and holding crypto such as bitcoin, the entire rotting carcass of the banking system will cave in on itself and collapse.
What happened in Canada last year with the truckers should be a warning to the lengths that a government will go to in order to stop citizens from legally donating their money to a cause. Entering people’s homes and demanding they supply their private keys to crypto wallets is an extreme.
Most terrorist funding via traditional banking system
Chris Skinner, author and commentator on digital finance, wrote a thought-provoking article earlier today on the subject of crypto funding for terrorists. He stated:
“The thing is that these reports smear the use of decentralised or alternative currencies all with the same brush. Crypto bad, internet bad, government good, banks good. It is a crude delineation that does not recognise that most terrorist funding actually takes place through the traditional banking system, using nested accounts and money laundering that, even with all of the efforts of governments of the world, is rife.”
Skinner is of the view that terrorist funding is a problem across all financial assets, and that crypto forms a very small part of this. Political influence being used to try and blame this issue on crypto could be considered a fraudulent undertaking in itself.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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