Hamas Military Wing Steered Donors Away From Binance Toward Rival Exchanges

Court Documents Reveal Specific Exchange Preferences

U.S. Department of Justice documents have surfaced showing that Hamas’ military wing actively directed its donors away from Binance and toward a specific list of alternative cryptocurrency platforms. The exchanges named in those documents – Bybit, OKX, Kast, and Redotpay – represent a calculated operational shift by the armed group, one that points to how militant organizations study and respond to exchange-level compliance enforcement in real time.

That guidance came directly from Hamas’ military wing to donors.

The disclosure adds a concrete layer to an ongoing debate about which exchanges bear responsibility – legal or moral – when their platforms appear in communications tied to sanctioned organizations. Binance’s absence from the preferred list is notable precisely because it suggests the group had already concluded that Binance posed a detection or enforcement risk significant enough to warn donors away from it entirely. That conclusion, embedded in DOJ materials, may carry weight in future regulatory and legal proceedings touching any of the named platforms.

What the DOJ Documents Actually Say

The documents do not describe transactions that were confirmed to have moved through Bybit, OKX, Kast, or Redotpay. What they establish is that Hamas’ military wing issued guidance recommending those platforms as alternatives to Binance. The distinction matters because the evidentiary threshold for a recommendation differs from that of a completed financial transfer – but in the context of terrorism financing investigations, documented intent and operational planning carry their own legal weight.

Kast and Redotpay are smaller platforms that operate with less public visibility than Bybit or OKX, which rank among the largest cryptocurrency exchanges globally by trading volume. Their inclusion alongside two industry heavyweights suggests that Hamas’ military wing was not simply identifying the most popular alternatives to Binance, but rather assembling a list based on perceived vulnerability to surveillance or asset seizure. Whether that assessment was accurate is a separate question from the fact that it was made and recorded.

The DOJ’s ability to obtain and publish these communications reflects the degree to which encrypted or internal guidance documents from militant organizations can eventually enter the public legal record. For the exchanges named, the practical consequence is that their compliance teams and legal departments are now operating with the knowledge that their platforms were specifically identified in a terrorism financing context by a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Binance’s Implicit Role in the Calculation

Binance’s position in this story is, in some ways, the most revealing element. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume was not named as a platform Hamas recommended – it was named as one to actively avoid. That framing, if taken at face value, suggests that Binance’s compliance infrastructure had become visible enough to a militant group that the group felt it necessary to route donors elsewhere. Binance has faced years of intense regulatory scrutiny globally, including a landmark 2023 settlement with U.S. authorities that involved billions in penalties and a guilty plea on anti-money laundering failures.

The irony embedded in that record is that Binance’s compliance failures – which drew the DOJ’s attention in the first place – may have simultaneously produced enough enforcement activity to make the exchange less attractive for illicit fund movement. Whether that outcome was intentional or simply a byproduct of sustained legal pressure is difficult to determine from the outside. What the Hamas military wing’s guidance makes clear is that at the operational level, the distinction between exchanges with aggressive compliance regimes and those without is being tracked and acted upon.

For regulators already pushing for tighter oversight of cryptocurrency platforms, the DOJ documents offer a specific, named example of how compliance gaps – real or perceived – shape the behavior of bad actors across the ecosystem. The SEC and CFTC have signaled aggressive rulemaking intentions as legislative frameworks remain unsettled, and disclosures like this one tend to accelerate that pressure rather than slow it.

The Compliance Spotlight Lands on Named Platforms

Bybit, OKX, Kast, and Redotpay now face a specific and documented association – not an allegation of wrongdoing, but a reference point that prosecutors, regulators, and journalists will cite going forward. None of the exchanges have been charged with any offense in connection with these documents, and the DOJ materials describe guidance issued by Hamas rather than confirmed activity on any particular platform. But the reputational and regulatory exposure created by appearing in terrorism financing documents is real, regardless of whether any platform facilitated an actual transaction.

OKX in particular has navigated a complicated compliance history. In early 2025, OKX’s operating entity reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over anti-money laundering violations, paying approximately $505 million in combined penalties and forfeiture. That prior settlement means OKX enters this new disclosure already operating under heightened regulatory scrutiny, with its compliance posture already a matter of public record and active monitoring by U.S. authorities. The timing of the Hamas military wing’s guidance – and when exactly it was issued – has not been fully clarified in public reporting, which leaves open the question of whether OKX was recommended before or after its 2025 settlement.

Kast and Redotpay, operating at a smaller scale, face a different kind of exposure. Platforms with fewer resources dedicated to compliance and government relations are generally less equipped to manage the legal, public relations, and regulatory consequences of appearing in DOJ documents tied to a designated terrorist organization. For both companies, the disclosure creates an immediate pressure to engage publicly with their compliance frameworks and demonstrate – to regulators and to institutional partners – that adequate controls exist.

The broader pattern here is one that law enforcement agencies have described repeatedly: militant and criminal organizations actively study which financial platforms carry the highest risk of detection, and they adjust accordingly. That the adjustment was documented and has now surfaced in U.S. court materials means the intelligence value runs in both directions – Hamas’ military wing was mapping the compliance landscape, and now regulators and law enforcement have a clearer map of where that wing believed the gaps were.