Bitcoin could fund Global jihad - funds are untraceable

[OakWood]

http://news.sky.com/story/1296508/global-jihad-could-be-funded-with-bitcoin

 

A new blog associated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has said that bitcoin could "enable jihad on a large scale" by sending "millions of dollars" to fighters.

In a post called "Bitcoin and the Charity of Violent Physical Struggle", the author argues such donations would be "untrackable" by Western governments.

The article in a new online magazine explains how the Bitcoin network works, commenting that it "instantly allows for shari' (sic) only compliant markets that cross all borders".

The article highlights Dark Wallet, a Bitcoin wallet currently in alpha development that uses encryption to make it harder to trace Bitcoin transactions.

According to the post: "This allows our brothers stuck outside of the ardh Dawlatul-Islam to avoid government taxes along with secretly fund the mujahideen with no legal danger upon them.

"This system has the potential to revive the lost sunnah of donating to the mujahideen, it is simple, easy, and we ask Allah to hasten it’s usage for us."

In February, the Canadian government warned that bitcoin could be used for money laundering and financing terrorism.

The US Department of Defense is currently conducting a counter-terrorism investigation of virtual currencies like bitcoin.

A memo written by the department's Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office and first published in May by Bitcoin Magazine stated: "The introduction of virtual currency will likely shape threat finance by increasing the opaqueness, transactional velocity, and overall efficiencies of terrorist attacks."

The new Wordpress blog which published the bitcoin article was originally planned as a magazine, but was superseded by an official magazine called Islamic State News.

Its authors are posting the material they had already prepared.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency which is not backed by any government or central bank.

Each bitcoin is 'mined' by users who use powerful computers to carry out complex mathematical equations.

 

[Carlos Regular]

Well that's true of any currency, one has to wonder if having the government tracking every transaction is a good thing or a system of control.

[OakWood]

Well that's true of any currency, one has to wonder if having the government tracking every transaction is a good thing or a system of control.

 

They will claim that it is a good thing, by using terrorism as an example. Yet we know what happens when government makes more rules to restrict our freedoms - it only ever affects us, not the terrorists. In fact, I'm sure they do this on purpose.

Look at airport security for example. Thanks to Muslim terrorism, we can't take certain things on planes anymore, we hear of little old ladies being body-searched, long queues - everybody is a suspect. Yet they never profile the people they should be profiling. I hear of women wearing hijabs being waved through customs without any checks in case it offends their religion.

 

The Western governments will try to bring in a cashless society where they can trace every transaction and use the excuse that it is for our own security. But I bet they'll spend more time checking people for tax evasion than they will checking Muslims for funding jihad!