Hamas Military Wing’s Crypto Guidance Surfaces in US Forfeiture Filing
TREE NEWS reports: A US Department of Justice asset forfeiture filing dated September 9 has fully reproduced a letter from the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in which the group advises potential donors to avoid Binance when moving funds. Instead, the letter recommends Bybit, OKX, Kast and Redotpay, and suggests using Tether’s USDT on the Tron blockchain via the TRC-20 network. Binance, it says, should be used only to buy currency before completing transfers through another application.
Binance Chief Compliance Officer Noah Perlman said the guidance shows the exchange’s controls are working and that Binance is not a safe venue for illicit actors.
Why the Guidance Matters
The document offers a rare window into how sanctioned organizations assess crypto platforms for detection and freeze risk. The operational logic is straightforward: exchanges with aggressive transaction monitoring, blockchain analytics integration and law-enforcement cooperation are treated as hostile terrain, while venues perceived as having lighter touchpoints are favored.
- Chain choice: Tron’s TRC-20 USDT remains popular for low fees and high liquidity, but its use in sanctions-evasion narratives keeps it under regulatory scrutiny.
- Platform choice: The named alternatives span global exchanges and payment apps, highlighting a diversified approach to avoid single points of failure.
- Compliance signal: Binance’s exclusion is being framed by the company as evidence that its remediation program — following its 2023 US settlement — has changed its risk profile.
Industry Implications
For compliance teams, the filing reinforces that terrorist financing networks are adaptive and platform-aware. It also complicates the narrative that major exchanges are uniformly permissive. Regulators may use such evidence to justify expanding Travel Rule enforcement, stablecoin issuer controls and sanctions screening for payment apps.
For exchanges named as alternatives, the reputational and regulatory pressure is immediate. Bybit and OKX have invested heavily in compliance but may face questions about monitoring standards, particularly for peer-to-peer and wallet-to-wallet flows. Kast and Redotpay, which focus on card and payment rails, could draw scrutiny over onboarding and transaction monitoring.
Forward-Looking View
The episode is likely to accelerate three trends: tighter stablecoin issuer-level blacklisting, more aggressive blockchain analytics at the payment-app layer, and greater emphasis on wallet clustering to identify donor networks. It also strengthens Binance’s argument that enforcement actions and monitorships can reshape a platform’s risk posture over time.
Ultimately, the document shows that sanctions enforcement is no longer just about naming bad actors — it is about how those actors perceive and navigate the compliance perimeter of the crypto industry.
