The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has made a partial correction to an article that mistakened the amount of cryptocurrency received by Hamas and other militant groups for funding their terrorist activities.
The article named “Hamas Militants Behind Israel Attack Raised Millions in Crypto,” cited Elliptic to say Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a terrorist organization operating in the Gaza Strip, had raised as much as $93 million in cryptocurrency between August 2021 and June 2023.
In the mentioned report by Elliptic, it mentioned that Israel’s counter-terrorism unit seized wallets associated with PIJ that had received $93 million during that period.
However, Elliptic clarified that this did not necessarily mean that PIJ had raised all of these funds to finance its terrorism activities.
Subsequent research from another blockchain forensics firm, Chainalysis, indicated that only $450,000 of these funds had been sent to a wallet linked to known terrorism-affiliated activities.
As a result, the WSJ issued a correction, stating that PIJ and the Lebanese political party Hezbollah might have exchanged up to $12 million in cryptocurrency. This figure was significantly less than the original $93 million mentioned in the article.
The Wall Street Journal retracted its article after Elliptic, a blockchain forensics firm, pointed out the misinterpretation of data. Elliptic emphasized that cryptocurrency funding for Hamas is relatively insignificant compared to other sources of funding.
On October 27, Elliptic expressed satisfaction that The WSJ acknowledged its errors but wished the newspaper had been more specific in its corrections.
