AlpineCipher

Last week, the @WSJ published an article claiming about $90 million worth of crypto was used to fund Hamas — a serious claim that gained significant attention. In response to the article, anti-Bitcoin politicians directly linked the WSJ article as evidence in a letter to the White House and Treasury “to address the serious national security threats posed by crypto’s use to finance terrorism.” Later, it was confirmed that the article was patently false. It was straight up fake news. This was confirmed by @chainalysis, which ran the numbers. Turns out the authors of the article mistakenly counted an entire exchanges’s trading volume ($82 million) for a terrorist group’s address. Rookie move! The actual funds that went to known terrorist-linked addresses was substantially less. “Of the roughly $82 million in cryptocurrency received by this address, about $450,000 worth of funds were transferred from the known terror-affiliated wallet. Given the activity of this address, the person or group of people controlling it is likely not the same person that controls the terror-affiliated wallet, but is rather a service provider that knowingly or unknowingly facilitated the terror financing activity.” So the WSJ’s figure for crypto use in financing Hamas was off by over 99%! My question is…where is your retraction article @WSJ? Where is the article describing why your reporters were blatantly wrong about this? If you don’t retract it, politicians with an agenda will likely continue to use this fake news as evidence to attack an industry they have a personal vendetta against. Fix this please.