A good while ago, I used to type from the sunny confines of Tampa’s Davidoff superstore. Sometimes, around lunch, this greasy, conman-looking character would slither in and occupy a table. He’d be joined by a steady stream of well-dressed saps who, upon hearing his razzle-dazzle crypto pitch, couldn’t fork over their fiat and/or fake credit substitute money fast enough. That told me all I ever wanted to know about the electronic nothing. Here’s harder proof.

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has been accused of seizing “all funds from all Palestinians” on a request from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The exchange has denied the allegation, insisting it targeted only a “limited” number of accounts over “illicit funds.”

The accusation was first raised by Ray Youssef, the CEO of peer-to-peer crypto marketplace NoOnes and co-founder of crypto platform Paxful, on Monday. The crypto entrepreneur took to X to directly accuse Binance of seizing the funds of all Palestinians.

“Binance has seized all funds from all Palestinians as per the request of the IDF. They refuse to return the funds. All appeals denied,” Youssef claimed, citing several sources and a letter from the Israeli authorities said to have been circulated by Binance.

The letter, signed in November 2023 by Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing, Paul Landes, was allegedly referred to by the platform in response to Palestinian users who appealed the block. The documents cite an Israeli law enabling the military to issue a “temporary seizure of property of a declared terrorist organization,” including cryptocurrencies.

Crypto was supposed to be secret, secure, and safe. Except it isn’t any of those things. In this case, whether it was all the funds or any portion, all it took was a letter from a terrorist organization acting as a government to confiscate the pseudo money. The only safe currency bet it dealing with real money issued by a real government that runs the banks, central and commercial.

And I mean that guy was greasy.