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Militants Behind Israel Attack Raised Millions in Crypto

yieldcrv 3y ago
> For transactions, they primarily used the stablecoin tether, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar, avoiding the volatility that affects other tokens. they need to be careful using Tether, DAI is the best bet for a stablecoin without a freezing function and automated redemption. US VC backed if you're not familiar with it, pretty time tested. I appreciate crypto that highlights the relative morality of transaction whitelisting and other capital controls, since an asset seizure by any sovereign nation theoretically cleanses that crypto when it is recirculated or sold off, despite the transaction history always showing the illicit use (by the opinion of that one nation) and the subsequent seizure and cleaning. Are transaction flagging services like Chainanalysis and Elliptic even equipped for that? Are we to care if China says moving >$50,001/yr is illegal and moves to sanction one of their residents, or are we to only care when Israel gets a seizure order against a Hamas-linked account on Binance like in the article? Or should our opinion be limited to our own country's regulations against drug dealers and court orders? smells like utility to me, especially when the people see this game is futile and deprecated, and get their government out of the business of whitelisting transactions at all, since its wasting everyone's time and an unnecessary overhead cost for all financial institutions
- k8svet 3y ago
  I guess I sort of know I'm an semi-ignorant trying-to-pretend-like-im-not crypto guy, but can you help me understand how some authority going to take away my erc20 usdt, held on my Ledger?
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    Tether can freeze or nullify the transfer capability of any USDT at any address. They can and have done this arbitrarily, they can cite a skittish corporate policy at preventing money laundering, they can do it in response to what they consider to be a rug or exploit address, they can do it in response to addresses that received funds from the aforementioned exploit address from their perspective, they can also do it in response to any court order from any country they care about listening to and you’ll never see the order yourself all of these things have occurred in the near …decade… of its circulation. fairly routine operation just like any financial institution does, except now you can watch the frozen funds for all eternity and quantify them
    - k8svet 3y ago
      So, I guess you're saying the erc20 contract for USDT has a backdoor builtin? On the one hand, I feel like I would've heard about this before, but on the other hand, I don't follow crypto circles off HN and the crypto discourse here is... well, not very deep. Not to sound skeptical, I'm going to go read more and really appreciate your comments.
      - DANmode 3y ago
        > crypto discourse here is... well, not very deep. You can say that again.
      - yieldcrv 3y ago
        yeah, USDC has the same function along with GeminiUSD by the Winklevoss twins and PaypalUSD all the “money in a bank account” stablecoins have a similar structure. It isnt based on any resolved regulatory appeasing, its just what they wanted to do and imagined would be helpful for regulatory compliance, but it also lets them just freeze anything and keep collecting interest on the associated dollars and never needing to have it available for redemption its a decent business model here is USDT’s contract code https://etherscan.io/address/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7#code https://etherscan.io/address/0xdac17f958d2ee523a220620699459... in the outline you can look is the “addToBlacklist” method, alongside the “destroyBlacklistFunds” method not only can they freeze your address’ ability to transfer, they can unilaterally subtract your balance it is a centralized asset that simply settles faster on distributed ledger technology like blockchains there are a couple decentralized attempts at the same model using overcollateralization and no central issuer or central control or freezing function, DAI is the closest.
postcynical 3y ago
Next up: encryption without gov backdoors.
diggan 3y ago
> It couldn’t be determined whether the crypto they received was directly used to finance the assault. Wouldn't this be relatively trivial? Everything is tracked on a blockchain, if it's still sitting in the wallet of Hammas, one could assume those assets weren't used as either they would have been transferred either to another party as payment, or transferred in order to exchange it to USD or whatever. > Israeli police said Tuesday that they froze further crypto accounts used by Hamas to solicit donations on social networks Not sure how big Hamas' IT operation is, but if they had at least some clue about cryptocurrency, they wouldn't keep their wallets on a exchange that Israeli police could seize, or I don't understand how it got seized.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  only a tiny fraction was on exchange, hence why the journalist can watch the wallets at all. yeah, its dumb that some social media intern is soliciting funds directly to an exchange account
mark_l_watson 3y ago
Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, but something has confused me for a long time: why aren’t there permanent international observers in Israel and Gaza to help protect innocent civilian populations on both sides? The UN should do its job. And it is not my intention to pick on the Israelis and Palestinians here: there are many hotspots in the world that should have permanent international observers. I don’t see the downside, and if it would reduce civilian casualties, then well worth the money and resources.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  this is easy: Israel has basically never been hit. There was no expectation for there to be a ground assault from Gaza. Occasionally missiles from Gaza reach the ground, and a UN observer on the Israeli side would not be able to help with that. Gaza is dense and all the UN observers would routinely get killed in Israeli retaliations. The modus operandi from Israel is precision missile strikes on specific buildings, but all buildings are targets because Hamas uses human shields, not like there is any military specific area they could go in Gaza as its too dense and would also get bombed immediately if there was. So, this 'human shield' observation has no limits and there is no appeals process. There is generally no ground operation from Israel. you're speaking from the future because that's all changed now. edit: and as others pointed out, there are UN operations in other areas not related to the Gaza conflict. because there are other conflicts
  - tguvot 3y ago
    >There was no expectation for there to be a ground assault from Gaz there were expectation that there will be. this is why there is fence, undeground wall, seismic and acoustic sensors to detect tunnels (there were multiple attempt to attack Israel through them) and some observation towers . there were multiple army and police exercises for dealing specifically with what just happened. There were multiple people who predicted that it will happen
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    > Israel has basically never been hit. It seems like I recall Egypt and Syria invading in 1973, right?

> For transactions, they primarily used the stablecoin tether, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar, avoiding the volatility that affects other tokens. they need to be careful using Tether, DAI is the best bet for a stablecoin without a freezing function and automated redemption. US VC backed if you're not familiar with it, pretty time tested. I appreciate crypto that highlights the relative morality of transaction whitelisting and other capital controls, since an asset seizure by any sovereign nation theoretically cleanses that crypto when it is recirculated or sold off, despite the transaction history always showing the illicit use (by the opinion of that one nation) and the subsequent seizure and cleaning. Are transaction flagging services like Chainanalysis and Elliptic even equipped for that? Are we to care if China says moving >$50,001/yr is illegal and moves to sanction one of their residents, or are we to only care when Israel gets a seizure order against a Hamas-linked account on Binance like in the article? Or should our opinion be limited to our own country's regulations against drug dealers and court orders? smells like utility to me, especially when the people see this game is futile and deprecated, and get their government out of the business of whitelisting transactions at all, since its wasting everyone's time and an unnecessary overhead cost for all financial institutions

k8svet 3y ago
I guess I sort of know I'm an semi-ignorant trying-to-pretend-like-im-not crypto guy, but can you help me understand how some authority going to take away my erc20 usdt, held on my Ledger?
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  Tether can freeze or nullify the transfer capability of any USDT at any address. They can and have done this arbitrarily, they can cite a skittish corporate policy at preventing money laundering, they can do it in response to what they consider to be a rug or exploit address, they can do it in response to addresses that received funds from the aforementioned exploit address from their perspective, they can also do it in response to any court order from any country they care about listening to and you’ll never see the order yourself all of these things have occurred in the near …decade… of its circulation. fairly routine operation just like any financial institution does, except now you can watch the frozen funds for all eternity and quantify them
  - k8svet 3y ago
    So, I guess you're saying the erc20 contract for USDT has a backdoor builtin? On the one hand, I feel like I would've heard about this before, but on the other hand, I don't follow crypto circles off HN and the crypto discourse here is... well, not very deep. Not to sound skeptical, I'm going to go read more and really appreciate your comments.
    - DANmode 3y ago
      > crypto discourse here is... well, not very deep. You can say that again.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      yeah, USDC has the same function along with GeminiUSD by the Winklevoss twins and PaypalUSD all the “money in a bank account” stablecoins have a similar structure. It isnt based on any resolved regulatory appeasing, its just what they wanted to do and imagined would be helpful for regulatory compliance, but it also lets them just freeze anything and keep collecting interest on the associated dollars and never needing to have it available for redemption its a decent business model here is USDT’s contract code https://etherscan.io/address/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7#code https://etherscan.io/address/0xdac17f958d2ee523a220620699459... in the outline you can look is the “addToBlacklist” method, alongside the “destroyBlacklistFunds” method not only can they freeze your address’ ability to transfer, they can unilaterally subtract your balance it is a centralized asset that simply settles faster on distributed ledger technology like blockchains there are a couple decentralized attempts at the same model using overcollateralization and no central issuer or central control or freezing function, DAI is the closest.

postcynical 3y ago

Next up: encryption without gov backdoors.

diggan 3y ago

> It couldn’t be determined whether the crypto they received was directly used to finance the assault. Wouldn't this be relatively trivial? Everything is tracked on a blockchain, if it's still sitting in the wallet of Hammas, one could assume those assets weren't used as either they would have been transferred either to another party as payment, or transferred in order to exchange it to USD or whatever. > Israeli police said Tuesday that they froze further crypto accounts used by Hamas to solicit donations on social networks Not sure how big Hamas' IT operation is, but if they had at least some clue about cryptocurrency, they wouldn't keep their wallets on a exchange that Israeli police could seize, or I don't understand how it got seized.

yieldcrv 3y ago
only a tiny fraction was on exchange, hence why the journalist can watch the wallets at all. yeah, its dumb that some social media intern is soliciting funds directly to an exchange account

mark_l_watson 3y ago

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, but something has confused me for a long time: why aren’t there permanent international observers in Israel and Gaza to help protect innocent civilian populations on both sides? The UN should do its job. And it is not my intention to pick on the Israelis and Palestinians here: there are many hotspots in the world that should have permanent international observers. I don’t see the downside, and if it would reduce civilian casualties, then well worth the money and resources.

yieldcrv 3y ago
this is easy: Israel has basically never been hit. There was no expectation for there to be a ground assault from Gaza. Occasionally missiles from Gaza reach the ground, and a UN observer on the Israeli side would not be able to help with that. Gaza is dense and all the UN observers would routinely get killed in Israeli retaliations. The modus operandi from Israel is precision missile strikes on specific buildings, but all buildings are targets because Hamas uses human shields, not like there is any military specific area they could go in Gaza as its too dense and would also get bombed immediately if there was. So, this 'human shield' observation has no limits and there is no appeals process. There is generally no ground operation from Israel. you're speaking from the future because that's all changed now. edit: and as others pointed out, there are UN operations in other areas not related to the Gaza conflict. because there are other conflicts
- tguvot 3y ago
  >There was no expectation for there to be a ground assault from Gaz there were expectation that there will be. this is why there is fence, undeground wall, seismic and acoustic sensors to detect tunnels (there were multiple attempt to attack Israel through them) and some observation towers . there were multiple army and police exercises for dealing specifically with what just happened. There were multiple people who predicted that it will happen
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  > Israel has basically never been hit. It seems like I recall Egypt and Syria invading in 1973, right?