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The defeats on the military level suffered by Islamic fundamentalist groups last year have also been a serious blow to the finances of these jihadist organizations. The loss of land, armament and resources has led them to seek new forms of financing that replace those that have traditionally been used (coercive taxes to those who subjected the population of the areas under their control and sales of oil) and have found in technology your best ally .

Gone are the delusions of greatness when the ISIS announced with hype and saucer the creation of its own currency: the gold dinar , looking for a propaganda maneuver and the creation of state structures.

Now, they must resort to methods traditionally associated with crime to keep their infrastructure afloat. In addition to selling stolen archeology through Facebook , the Jihadists have opted for Bitcoin as a way to earn money for their cause.

"Those who cannot be part of jihad for physical reasons but who can collaborate with their wealth must do so with their money . The wealthy must spend their money on the will of Ala," says one of the announcements of these groups next to the address Bitcoin virtual wallet, consisting of an alphanumeric code.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency, decentralized, hardly falsifiable that uses Blockchain technology. It also has the peculiarity that it is extremely complicated to track your transactions. These qualities make this digital currency one of the favorites, for example, for the sale of drugs and weapons through virtual markets (similar to Amazon or Aliexpress) that are hosted on the Depp Web.

Often, Islamic fundamentalist groups do not hide the aims of these financing campaigns. They use explicit slogans like "Jahezona" (which could be translated into Spanish as "equípanos"), explain that the destiny of the funds is the purchase of military equipment and use images or propaganda graphics in which militiamen carrying weapons of war appear.

Like organized crime, the Jihadists have realized that Bitcoin offers them the possibility of financing simply and extremely difficult to track and block by the authorities that hunt them .

These reasons have led, for example, to the brigades of Ezzeldim Al-Qassam, the armed arm of the Hamas organization , have opted for this form of financing in the face of the blockade to which their organization is subjected by the Israeli government in collaboration. Of Egipt.

In fact, the group's website (which is on the open Internet and is accessible from countries like Spain) has basically become a crowdfounding portal with video tutorials in different languages ​​in which they explain how to carry out donations to finance your organization

The system used by Ezzeldim Al-Qassam is more complex than a virtual wallet to use . People who wish to collaborate with the cause of this Islamist group should select a check box. After this process, a new virtual wallet is generated for that specific donation. In this way, each donation is intended for a purse that is used only once , making the work of the security forces in capital traceability even more difficult.

On the other hand, the Tahrir Al-Sham group - also known as the Nusra Front -, an organization that operates in Syria in order to turn the country into an Islamic emirate following the precepts dictated by Al-Qaeda , has approved from the point of view of its Islamic doctrine, calling it Bitcoin as "safer than paper currencies."

"Although its real value fluctuates, that also happens with paper currencies. Some physical currencies have a lot of stability but, in general, they also undergo changes. Therefore, the use of virtual currencies is allowed, which are closer to gold and silver in terms of credit value. They can be used to pay taxes if their value is equivalent to the appropriate amount in gold or silver, "said the preacher and jurist of the Abu al-Fath Al-farghali group in a video broadcast through Telegram and social networks.

The Islamic State is no exception when it comes to cryptocurrencies for financing . They are aware of "bank transfers, PayPal, Western Union and prepaid cards [all modern methods that leave more or less trace and allow traceability of money] have failures." However, the most famous jihadist group in the world considers that " there are other cryptocurrencies superior to Bitcoin ", without going into details of what could be better options to send them the money for their terrorist attacks.

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