Crypto
UN Palestinian aid agency's cryptocurrency wallets investigated over Hamas ties
EXCLUSIVE — An Israeli firm that helped authorities claw back $90 million worth of Hamas-owned cryptocurrency is investigating digital wallets held by the leading Palestinian aid agency for the United Nations, the Washington Examiner has learned.
Lionsgate Network, a Tel Aviv-based company staffed by blockchain analysts, specializes in cash recovery services for investors and was notably enlisted by Israel’s Ministry of Defense to intercept funds linked to Hamas after the terrorist faction’s deadly Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state. Now, Lionsgate has embarked on a new project: tracking the flow of crypto donations to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, whose since-fired employees were recently accused by Israel of participating in the Hamas-led massacre, prompting the United States and other countries to pause aid to UNRWA.
“Our company’s vision is to secure crypto transactions and eliminate financial transactions targeting communities around the world,” Lionsgate Network CEO Bezalel Raviv told the Washington Examiner. “There is a loophole in the financial system, and it’s no longer a very small group of people. It’s like 1.5% of the world’s capital — we’re talking about over $1.5 trillion U.S. dollars.”
The startup’s investigation underscores how UNRWA, which has long earned the ire of foreign policy experts and lawmakers over its ties to Hamas, is being comprehensively scrutinized by watchdogs after the Oct. 7 attack. Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced legislation on Monday that would ban U.S. funds to UNRWA. The Biden administration renewed aid in 2021 to the Palestinian aid agency just three years after former President Donald Trump cut off support to UNRWA over concerns stemming from its ties to terrorism and the hiring of antisemitic employees.
In turn, Biden’s decision has culminated in taxpayers footing the bill for at least $730 million in payments to UNRWA since 2021. The U.S. government said on Tuesday that over 99% of U.S. funds approved by Congress for the UNRWA have already been sent to it — with just $300,000 still on hold.
UNRWA formed in 1949 “to carry out direct relief and works programs for Palestinian refugees.” But critics say it unjustly relieves Hamas, which controls Gaza, of responsibilities to provide basic services to civilians. The agency, which is led by Swiss Italian Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, faces an uncertain future after Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted that Israeli allegations about its employees participating in Oct. 7 are “highly credible.”
UNRWA has a 501(c)(3) charity in the U.S. that accepts crypto donations, such as bitcoin, a digital asset that, for federal tax purposes, is treated as “property,” according to the IRS and digital software records. The crypto option stems from the UNRWA charity’s partnership in December 2021 with the Giving Block, a fundraising platform for tax-exempt organizations.
Raviv said his company is tracking specific blockchain transactions to see where donations to the Palestinian aid agency end up and is in conversation with the U.S. State Department on certain projects.
While Lionsgate successfully worked to recover cash from Hamas, the terrorist group has become more elusive and shifted its assets around, the CEO told the Washington Examiner. Hamas and other terrorist groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, have increasingly turned to crypto in recent years because its decentralized nature affords secrecy, according to multiple reports.
After Oct. 7, the U.S. government sanctioned the Gaza-based Buy Cash, a company that saw its wallets seized in 2021 by Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing “in connection to a Hamas fundraising campaign,” the U.S. Treasury Department said. Crypto coins are stored by users in what are known as digital wallets, which contain information such as private passwords and confidential data, according to Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the world.
Lionsgate’s investigation into UNRWA is independent and, for the time being, not on behalf of any clients, according to Raviv.
“Conversations with the State Department are becoming closer because one of the Hamas wallets is still active and over $40 million is moving in and out,” Raviv said.
The Tel Aviv-based analytics and software firm BitOK found Hamas-tied crypto wallets raked in the cash between roughly August 2021 and June 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“Awareness is key,” he said. “We really want to encourage communities and people who are active in the crypto community to look at the problems and solutions.”
Aside from crypto, UNRWA’s charity in the U.S. routinely takes large sums through donor-advised funds, which allow wealthy contributors to shield their names from publicly released financial disclosures. The arrangement is often criticized by watchdogs as a “dark money” loophole.
UNRWA’s charity in the U.S., for instance, accepted $262,578 in 2022 through the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, tax forms show.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
That year, $109,280 also flowed through the Schwab Charitable Fund to the UNRWA’s U.S. outfit.
UNRWA and the State Department did not return requests for comment.
(NewsNation) – A type of criminal activity known as “wrench attacks,” in which robbers physically coerce people into handing over their cryptocurrency holdings, is on the rise, according to crypto security firm CertiK.
Nik Seetharaman, the CEO of cyberdefense company Wraith Watch, recently told Nexstar’s NewsNation that he believes the increase in wrench attacks can be partly attributed to people flaunting their wealth online, which he noted makes it easier for criminals to identify and track down people with a lot of money.
“In the crypto community especially, you have this culture of, you know, flaunting your assets and … posting pictures of yourself in (places like) Ibiza and Bali,” Seetharaman explained.
He also pointed to improvements in digital security that make it so criminals “have no option but to basically hold you at gunpoint and say, ‘Enter your password into this phone right now or bad things are going to happen to you or your family.’”
NewsNation local affiliate KTLA reported that experts also say the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies and the ability to transfer large sums in irreversible transactions make large account holders vulnerable to bad actors.
How big an issue are wrench attacks?
The name “wrench attacks” was popularized by an online comic that mocked how easily high-tech security can be undone by hitting someone with a wrench until they give up passwords, according to The Associated Press.
CertiK released a report in May detailing global instances of wrench attacks, which showed that between January and April 2026, it identified 43 incidents resulting in victims losing more than $101 million in cryptocurrency.
The firm said those incidents represent a 41% increase over the same period last year, and if the rate continues, “2026 will close with approximately 130 incidents and several hundred million dollars in losses.”
In 2025, CertiK tracked only 81 attacks that resulted in victims losing approximately $52 million, further indicating that wrench attacks are a growing issue.
Wealthy California crypto holders targeted in recent attacks
In November 2025, a San Francisco man was robbed of $13 million in digital currency after thieves posing as pizza delivery drivers forced their way into his home, bound him with duct tape, beat him with a firearm and threatened to cut off his fingers, KTLA reported, citing The San Francisco Chronicle.
Three attempted wrench attacks in Sunnyvale, San Jose and Los Angeles that occurred in the days and weeks following the San Francisco home invasion appear to be linked.
Potential wrench attack in Nancy Guthrie case?
NewsNation contributor and former FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer believes Nancy Guthrie, the mother of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, who has been missing for more than 100 days, could have been the victim of a wrench attack.
Coffindaffer wrote on X Tuesday that she has been “speaking about a Wrench Attack that took place literally about 90 minutes North of Nancy’s house the day before Nancy was attacked since early March.”
Guthrie was last seen at her home on Jan. 31 in Pima County, near Tucson, Arizona. She is believed to have been abducted, and investigators are scrutinizing messages that have been sent to media outlets, possibly from kidnappers, at least one of which made a bitcoin ransom demand.
Separately, TMZ received a series of communications from a person claiming to know who the kidnapper is, and that individual has demanded a $100,000 cryptocurrency payment.
NewsNation local affiliate KTLA, NewsNation’s Sean Noone and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Key Takeaways
Still Some Time To Go Till The Bears Retreat
Bitcoin’s bear market may still have a year or more to run, according to Cryptoquant founder and chief executive Ki Young Ju, who spelled out the timeline in a post on X. “Once profit-taking cascades, Bitcoin investors’ PnL typically falls for about 18 months.” Ju wrote, using shorthand for aggregate investor profit and loss (PnL). “Since the trend turned in Oct 2025, the bear market could last until early 2027.”
His reasoning hinges on the direction of realized profits. Put simply, holders are still sitting on paper gains they are steadily cashing in, a dynamic that historically keeps pressure on price until that selling burns itself out. The PnL index he relies on blends several onchain valuation gauges (including the market-value-to-realized-value (MVRV) ratio and net unrealized profit and loss) into a single trend line that peaked around mid-2025 and has been sliding since.
The warning extends a position Ju has pressed for much of the past year, as he first declared bitcoin’s bull cycle over in 2025, citing a widening gap between the asset’s realized capitalization and its market capitalization.
Not Everyone, Including Cryptoquant’s Own Data, Agrees
The bleak timeline is far from settled even inside Ju’s own firm, as Cryptoquant’s Bull-Bear Cycle Indicator turned green on May 12 for the first time since March 2023, a signal that has historically coincided with the start of more constructive conditions.
Other analysts are more bullish still, with research firm K33 contending bitcoin’s roughly $60,000 February low already marked the maximum drawdown of this cycle (a decline of about 52% from the record $126,272 the asset printed on Oct. 6, 2025).
The split reveals a murky mid-cycle picture, because if Ju is right, traders face another grinding stretch before realized profits reset, and the next leg higher can begin. If the greening cycle indicator and steady ETF inflows win out, the bottom may already be in.
Either way, Ju has handed the market a clear tripwire to watch wherein the moment unrealized profits start climbing while realized profits fade, the 18-month clock he describes would finally be ready to flip.
The stablecoin industry has spent years trying to prove one thing above all else: that blockchain-based money can move faster, cheaper and more efficiently than the financial infrastructure it hopes to replace.
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