Bitcoin is reportedly funding terrorist acts. But is it really happening?
The peer-to-peer version of Bitcoin, which has been discussed since January 2009, supports online payments made directly from one party to another without any financial reasons, only transacting via an algorithm using a technology called blockchain with its sophistication to decentralize existing databases. encrypted and connected across all its networks and protects its users by eliminating personal data.
Seeing that in 2015, Interpol was charging Bitcoin. As a result, about 40% of the money that goes to Bitcoin is related to crime. These illegal transactions include the sale and purchase of drugs, hacking, pornography, money laundering and funding for terrorist acts.
By 2018, the idea is thought to have emerged from the University of Sydney research team, arguing that “a quarter of Bitcoin users and half of all transactions using Bitcoin are attributed to illegal activity.” they also estimate Bitcoin is worth $ 72 billion per year through various illegal transactions.
In late 2017, someone named Shahnaz owned $ 60,000 worth of bitcoins, he first exchanged them for US Dollars and then distributed them to well-known ISIS network groups in Pakistan, China, and Turkey as a recommendation.
In the report “Terror in the Dark” published by the Response Center for Radicalization and Terrorism it states that “there is no indication of using Bitcoin to support acts of terrorism, especially on a large scale”. The report said the terrorist group is more familiar with a transaction system called Hawala than using Bitcoin.
Etymologically, Hawala means “transfer” on the basis of “trust”. Hawala is a traditional funds transfer system popular in the Middle East with an agent-to-agent system right up to the final receipt. reportedly an annual remittance of $ 500 billion is circulating on the Hawala system.
These terrorist acts were self-financed, they came from relatively well-off families. They finance acts of terror with their own wages, they are willing to lose everything in order to complete the mission, even life becomes very trivial to them, especially just to give up money, “said Richard Barrett, an officer of the United Nations (UN).
It might be less efficient if the existence of bitcoin is said to fund acts of terrorism, Bitcoin may be more difficult to use for transactions, especially in countries with minimal technological infrastructure. unless it is made easy to exchange it for physical currency.
