Binance Responds to Allegations of Confiscated Palestinians Accounts

MetaversePlanet August 29, 2024Last Updated: August 29, 2024

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The cryptocurrency market experienced another sharp decline following news related to Binance. However, a statement from Binance suggests that the situation may not be as it appears.

The already unstable cryptocurrency markets saw a significant drop due to a recent development. This was triggered by a post on X that quickly reached millions. According to the post, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, had confiscated the crypto assets of all Palestinians at Israel’s request. The claim was made by Ray Youssef, one of the co-founders of the P2P crypto platform Paxful.

This allegation understandably raised concerns among cryptocurrency investors. The fear was that if Binance could impose such an action on Palestinian citizens today, it could do the same for another country tomorrow. This would imply that even the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world might not be trustworthy. However, Binance’s official statement clarifies that the situation may not be as it was portrayed. If this statement is accurate, it suggests that the cryptocurrency markets may have once again fallen victim to a wave of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt).

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Here’s the post by Ray Youssef:

In the post above, Ray Youssef wrote, “Binance confiscated all Palestinians’ funds at the request of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). They refuse to return the funds. All appeals were dismissed.” Just below this statement was a document written in Hebrew. But what did this document actually say?

Document written in Hebrew:

According to Ray Youssef, the document mentioned above was a response to Palestinians who sought to regain access to their accounts. When we translated the document into Turkish using services like Google Translate and ChatGPT, we found that some accounts were indeed blocked. However, the content did not fully align with Ray Youssef’s claims.

ChatGPT summarized the document as follows:

Content: In summary, the document contains a decision issued by the Israeli Ministry of Defense regarding financial sanctions against certain terrorist organizations. The decision involves freezing specific accounts and seizing assets to prevent financial support for terrorist organizations.

Document Summary:

With the approval of the Israeli Minister of Defense, it has been decided to freeze the financial resources of certain terrorist organizations effective November 1, 2023.
The decision is based on Article 56 of the Anti-Terrorism Law.
As part of this decision, certain individuals and organizations have been identified as providing financial support to terrorist organizations, and their assets will therefore be confiscated.
There is a legal right to appeal against the specified sanctions.

Signature at the Bottom of the Document: The document was signed by the Head of the Economic Counter-Terrorism Unit of the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

The translation of the same document via Google Translate is as follows:

Binance denies the allegation that all Palestinians’ crypto assets have been confiscated!

Unable to remain silent any longer, Binance management issued a statement on Cointelegraph, one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency news platforms. In this statement, Binance asserted that the allegations do not reflect the truth. While it is true that Binance did block some Palestinian accounts, the number was very small, and these accounts were linked to illegal transactions.

Binance’s statement on the matter is as follows:

“There have been some misstatements about this. Only a small number of user accounts linked to illicit funds were blocked from trading.”

However, this statement had little impact on the markets. As a result, all crypto assets, especially Bitcoin (BTC), experienced significant losses in value following the release of this news. At the time of writing, BTC is trading at $59,130, and Ethereum (ETH) is trading at $2,460.