The Accusation<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs accused Binance, Changpeng \u201cCZ\u201d Zhao (its founder and former CEO) and BAM Trading Services (the company behind the Binance.US exchange) of facilitating 64 terrorist attacks carried out between 2016 and 2024. They claimed that Binance, Zhao and BAM Trading allowed wallets allegedly tied to Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, al\u2011Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Iranian proxies to move funds, amounting to aiding and abetting terrorism under the U.S. Anti\u2011Terrorism Act and the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA).<\/p>\n
Why The Crypto-Terror Financing Case Fell Apart<\/h2>\n
The court granted the motions to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), finding that the complaint failed to plausibly allege that Binance \u201cknowingly provided substantial assistance\u201d to the specific attacks at issue.<\/p>\n
The Judge\u2019s Two Big Criticisms<\/p>\n
Judge Jeannette Vargas\u2019s opinion is based on two fundamental weaknesses she identified in the plaintiffs\u2019 theory. First, although the complaint leaned heavily on blockchain traces, sanctions\u2011list designations and reports of terrorist groups using Binance, it did not plausibly show that Binance, Zhao or BAM Trading knew at the time that specific wallets on the platform were controlled by FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) or their close associates.<\/p>\n
Second, the court held that the plaintiffs failed to connect the alleged crypto flows on Binance to the 64 terrorist attacks they invoked. The complaint mapped out millions of dollars in transactions involving \u201cFTO\u2011associated\u201d or Iran\u2011linked wallets and described a broad ecosystem built to fund operations, but it did not identify who owned the wallets at issue, when specific transfers took place, what role those transfers played in operational planning. It also didn’t identify how any given Binance\u2011processed transaction materially advanced the specific bombings, rocket attacks, shootings, hostage\u2011takings, or the Wizard Spider ransomware incident that harmed the 535 plaintiffs.<\/p>\n
The Law Behind The Reasoning<\/p>\n
Under the U.S. Anti\u2011Terrorism Act and JASTA (The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act), it is not enough to show that designated terrorist organizations or sanctioned Iranian actors touched a platform at some point in time. Victims must plausibly allege that the defendant knew who it was dealing with and that its conduct was closely linked to the attacks at issue, not just to terrorism \u201cin general.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this case, the judge held that generalized allegations about \u201cterrorist\u2011associated wallets\u201d on Binance, and references to lax KYC (Know Your Customer), VPN loopholes, and U.S. user evasion, did not amount to a concrete showing that Binance\u2019s services materially advanced the operations that the plaintiffs suffered.<\/p>\n
Plaintiffs still have 60 days to refile, so, in truth, Binance is not entirely out of the woods yet. Besides, Binance remains under intense scrutiny: the exchange is still navigating a $4.3 billion AML and sanctions plea deal, a court\u2011appointed monitor, and political pressure in Washington over alleged terror\u2011finance exposure, as detailed by Bitcoinist and NewsBTC.<\/p>\n
![\"Bitcoin,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbtc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/BTCUSD_2026-03-09_10-51-34.png?w=847&resize=847%2C860\")
<\/p>\n
Cover image from ChatGPT, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A lawsuit accusing the crypto exchange Binance of allowing terrorism financing by facilitating it has fallen apart after a US Federal court dismissed it. Not Terrorist Supporters The Troell et al. v. Binance case was dismissed in an opinion and order issued on March 6 by Judge Jeannette A. Vargas of the U.S. District Court…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1218],"tags":[526,36],"class_list":["post-10504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crypto","tag-binance","tag-crypto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}