Binance seizes Palestinian crypto funds on Israel’s orders

World’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platform, Binance, froze the assets of Palestinians on the orders of Israeli authorities, according to Ray Youssef, the CEO of a prominent Bitcoin platform.

Ray Youssef, co-founder of the peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency platform Paxful and CEO of Noones P2P platform, stated on the microblogging platform X that Binance had seized Palestinians’ crypto funds.

On August 26, he shared a letter from Israeli authorities to Binance in a post on X.

“Binance has seized all funds from all Palestinians as per the request of the IDF. They refuse to return the funds. All appeals denied,” his post read.

Binance took this action after receiving a letter signed in November 2023 by Israel's National Bureau for Counter-Terror Financing, in response to requests from Palestinian users to unblock their funds.

The letter written in Hebrew explained that Binance confiscated Palestinian assets because “declared terrorist organisations” were involved in cryptocurrency transactions.

Israeli authorities claimed that militants used the cryptocurrency trading platform to commit “serious terrorist offenses."

“According to the anti-terrorism law, cryptographic currencies that have been transferred by a declared terrorist organization constitute property of a declared terrorist organization and cryptocurrency wallets to which it has been transferred,” the letter read.

Binance has seized all funds from all Palestinians as per the request of the IDF. They refuse to return the funds. All appeals denied.

Your funds are SAFU at @noonesapp tho.

In accordance with the authority delegated to me by the Minister of Defense, according to Section 61(a)… pic.twitter.com/RYlsFmlh2i

— Ray Youssef (@ray_noOnes) August 26, 2024

Binance, however, did not disclose the exact number of Palestinian accounts it seized, merely stating that the number was “insignificant.”

“There have been some incorrect statements around this. Only a small number of user accounts, linked to illicit funds, were blocked from transacting,” Binance told Cryptotelegraph.

According to SimilarWeb data, Palestine represents a small market for Binance, accounting for approximately 0.05% of its website traffic in the past year.

Binance saw an increase of over 80% in traffic from Palestine since August 2023.

Netizens slammed Binance trading platform for restricting access of Palestinians to cryptofunds.