DWF Labs switches headquarters from Singapore to Abu Dhabi

Israel Freezes Crypto Accounts Linked to HamasIsrael has taken action to freeze cryptocurrency accounts believed to be involved in a fundraising campaign for the Palestinian militant group Hamas on social media, according to a statement by Israeli police on Tuesday.Hamas recently carried out a series of devastating attacks from Gaza into Israel, leading to one of the most severe escalations in the Israel-Palestinian conflict in years.According to the police statement:“With the outbreak of the war, Hamas’ terrorist organisation initiated a fundraising campaign on social networks, urging the public to deposit cryptocurrencies into their accounts.”Photo by Taylor Brandon on UnsplashBinance implicatedIn response, the Police Cyber Unit and the Ministry of Defense, with the cooperation of global crypto exchange Binance, located and froze these accounts, with the intention of diverting the funds to the state treasury.While the statement did not provide specific details about the number of accounts frozen or the value of the cryptocurrencies seized, it emphasized the government’s proactive efforts to counteract these activities.Hamas had been using cryptocurrencies as a fundraising method for some time, but in April, the group announced that it would discontinue receiving donations in Bitcoin, citing an increase in “hostile” activities against its donors.Binance has been cooperating with global law enforcement agencies and regulators to combat illicit activities, including those related to terrorism financing. A spokesperson for Binance stated:“Over the past few days, our team has been working in real time, around the clock, to support ongoing efforts to combat terror financing.”Unwelcome attentionThe exchange also mentioned that the data used to identify individuals and entities associated with specific organizations comes from intelligence provided by law enforcement and investigative tools developed in collaboration with partners.While Binance is cooperating with law enforcement on these matters, such specific attention is likely to be unwelcome. The exchange platform has been the subject of severe regulatory pushback internationally in 2023. Any suggestion of terrorist financing being enabled through the platform, even if unknowingly so, won’t be helpful to the business in overcoming its regulatory challenges.In the lawsuit taken against Binance by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the United States earlier this year, the CFTC claimed that Binance was aware that it had facilitated terrorist financing, specifically referring to Hamas-related transactions.Given that all eyes are currently on the activities of the Palestinian terrorist group, there could also be trouble for rival platform Bitfinex. According to a Wall Street Journal report earlier this year, Bitfinex Turkiye was alleged to have facilitated an account that was used by Hamas for money laundering purposes.Previous crypto seizuresThis action by Israel is not the first of its kind. In May, Reuters reported that Israel had seized approximately 190 crypto accounts on Binance since 2021, including two accounts linked to the Islamic State and dozens owned by Palestinian firms associated with Hamas.Binance responded to these developments by affirming its commitment to cooperate with law enforcement agencies and emphasized that it uses information available only to law enforcement to identify individuals involved in activities related to illicit organizations.

South Korea's central bank governor has called for tokenizing government bonds and other assets, telling global peers that moving sovereign debt onto a shared digital ledger could reinforce monetary policy and financial stability. Speaking at the European Central Bank's annual forum in Sintra, Portugal, Bank of Korea Governor Hyun Song Shin said central banks should look beyond tokenizing money and deposits to assets such as government bonds and equities, according to Korea Economic Daily TV. He made the case in a paper titled "A unified ledger in practice: lessons from Project Hangang," based on the BOK's pilot of the same name. Shin described a unified ledger as a blueprint for a future monetary system: central bank money, bank deposits and assets sharing one programmable platform. In an asset trade, payment and settlement sit on that single platform and clear at once, so ownership changes hands the instant payment is made.Photo by Markus Winkler on UnsplashTokenized bonds as a policy toolIn the pilot's first phase, launched in October 2023, the BOK and commercial banks issued a wholesale central bank digital currency and tokenized bank deposits to test the concept, which is drawn from the Bank for International Settlements. Shin said the exercise showed deposit tokens could serve as a new means of payment, and that programmable rules could stop funds being misused the moment a transaction is made. Putting sovereign bonds on such a ledger, he added, would reinforce the bank's key mandates of monetary policy and financial stability. A second phase, due in the second half of this year, will apply those programmable features to government spending, beginning with electric-vehicle charging subsidies and public-sector expenses. Shin also floated linking the system to Project Agora, a cross-border settlement effort backed by seven central banks, to clear foreign-exchange and securities trades in a single step and widen international use of the Korean won. Regulators eye exchange banking rulesBack home, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) moved on two fronts of its own. The regulator has begun canvassing won-based exchanges and their partner banks about the practice of tying each exchange to a single bank for real-name accounts, Financial News reported. At issue is whether the current setup could handle an influx of institutions as authorities prepare to open the market to companies. Currently, crypto exchange Upbit works only with Kbank, and Bithumb only with KB Kookmin. Regulators are now weighing whether to loosen this one-to-one arrangement, letting one exchange use several banks or one bank serve several platforms, and separately whether to route crypto services through securities firms' trading apps. The FSC also referred two manipulation cases to prosecutors, Maeil Business Newspaper reported. In the first, a whale spent tens of billions of won (tens of millions of dollars) to corner about half the global supply of a token listed at home and abroad, pumping its price on an overseas venue over roughly two months before using arbitrage to lure Korean buyers. The trader lost money offshore but booked bigger gains at home, concentrating the damage on local investors. In the second, a trader loaded up on a domestically issued "kimchi coin," then used an API to fire repeated buy and sell orders within a single second and posted inflated bids to push the price up before selling into the demand. The FSC urged investors not to chase coins that spike without clear cause, warned of pump-and-dump schemes, and said it would step up disclosure of activity by large holders and sharpen alerts for trading concentrated in a few accounts. 

Mosca, a cash-to-crypto exchange headquartered at the Moscow International Business Center, was subject to a raid carried out by the Russian authorities on April 23. The raid occurred in the immediate aftermath of a call from a member of the commission of the Public Chamber (OP) of the Russian Federation to ban crypto exchanges from facilitating the purchase of cryptocurrencies using cash.Photo by Egor Filin on UnsplashInvestigating fraudWhile attending the Blockchain Life 2025 event in Moscow, Mosca’s Head of Development, Dmitry Titarenko, confirmed to Cointelegraph that the rationale provided for the raid was that it was in connection with fraud perpetrated by one of its platform users. Titarenko added: “Law enforcement agencies have carried out a standard procedure of checking our customer data.” The raid occurred during the company’s attendance at the Blockchain Life conference. Mosca was a key conference participant, having established two stands at the event and winning an award for the best crypto exchange service. Reporting on the raid, local media outlet Baza said that it had been carried out in relation to fraud perpetrated against the former head of the Samara Region Development Corporation, Olga Serova. It explained that Serova had been conned into handing over 350 million rubles ($4.24 million) and $800,000 to the scammers.  Seven arrestsShe withdrew these funds from her bank at the end of last year, despite bank officials having tried to persuade her against the withdrawal for this purpose. The news outlet added that to date, seven people have been arrested in connection with the alleged fraud. The Mosca exchange service may be proving to be attractive to scammers as the platform allows users to buy up to 100,000 USDT per day using cash. Titarenko couldn’t confirm that the raid was carried out in connection with the Serova fraud case. He said that “maybe it was [in relation to] another client.”The exchange executive also confirmed that the company had been in the process of putting in place more resources to carry out anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) checks, together with a blacklisting system related to suspicious platform users. Cash-to-crypto ban proposalThe raid occurred within 24 hours of Yevgeny Masharov, a member of the commission of the Public Chamber (OP) of the Russian Federation, putting forward a proposal to ban crypto exchanges from receiving cash, making services like Mosca’s cash-to-crypto exchange illegal. According to state-owned Russian news agency TASS, Masharov said that such a move would “cause a large-scale blow to scammers, because it’s no secret that telephone scammers use crypto exchangers to withdraw cash.”Sergey Mendeleev, a well-known figure within crypto circles in Russia, told attendees at the Blockchain Life conference that such a cash-to-crypto ban would be an unwelcome development for the sector. If such a ban were to materialize, Mendeleev suggested that it would be an indication that the Russian authorities were turning away from the greater development of cryptocurrency in Russia. Last week, it emerged that Russia’s Ministry of Finance, in collaboration with the country’s central bank, plans to launch a crypto exchange for qualified investors. The central bank also confirmed plans to launch a digital ruble payment network in 2026.