Increased bitcoin activity seen on day prior to Easter Sunday attacks: report

An investigation conducted by an Israeli blockchain intelligence startup Whitestream has found that on the day prior to the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, there were exceptionally large transfers in the bitcoin wallets that ISIS uses to raise contributions.

Militant Islamic terror group ISIS took responsibility for last month’s Sri Lankan bombings, which claimed the lives of over 250 people.According to Israeli financial newspaper, Globes, Whitestream has found that on the day before the bombings there was a sharp rise of hundreds of percent in the bitcoin balance held by CoinPayments, a company through which donations to ISIS are changed into bitcoin from regular currency.

On April 20, the day before the Easter attacks, the balance in the main wallet of CoinPayments rose from just US $500,000 to US $4.5 million.

The following day on which the lethal attacks took place, the wallet’s balance dropped back to US$ 500,000, the same as the average daily monthly balance during the previous nine months. CoinPayments is a commercial company registered in the Cayman Islands and operating out of Canada, which allows its customers to receive cryptocurrency payments and convert them into dollars.

“In the past two years, ISIS has been running a mass funding campaign to raise donations in bitcoin. The aim of the campaign is to contribute to the organization’s technological division, which deals with the media, advertising and computer infrastructure sectors.

The main efforts are carried out through a dedicated website. The domain address is frequently changed to prevent tracking by authorities around the world,” Globes quoted Whitestream as saying.