Bitcoin in the Headlines: US Teen Sparks ISIL Media Frenzy
Bitcoin in the Headlines is a weekly look at bitcoin news, analysing media and its impact. Bitcoin has been scrutinised in the past, but this week's criticism took on a rather unexpected - and perhaps questionable - sense of humour. The coverage over the last few days also exemplified just how unpredictable the media's attention can be. On the one hand, bitcoin's negative association with terrorist activity reached mass coverage by a wide range of mainstream outlets. Criticism by a multinational financial services corporation, however, failed to launch the media into a reporting frenzy.....
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Ali Shukri Amin has been sentenced to 11 years and four months in prison, according to the US Justice Department. A Virginia teenager who offered online advice on how to use bitcoin to fund terrorist group ISIL is to be sentenced today. Federal prosecutors asked US District Court Judge Claude Hilton to sentence 17-year-old Ali Shukri Amin to 15 years in prison after he pled guilty in June to a charge of providing material support to ISIL. In a statement of facts from June, prosecutors said Amin used social media to promote ISIL and discussed "ways to establish a secure donation system"....
A teenager who allegedly gave ISIL supporters advice on bitcoin has plead guilty to conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist group. 17-year-old Ali Shukri Amin, from Woodbridge, Virginia, worked as a writer for digital currency news site CoinBrief. He is accused of offering guidance to ISIL (or ISIS) supporters wanting to travel to Syria via Twitter, facing a maximum of 15 years in prison. Assistant attorney general John P Carlin said in a statement:
A Virginia teenager sentenced to more than 11 years in jail for supporting terrorism used bitcoin to instruct aspiring jihadists how to mask terrorist funding activities. U. S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton of the Eastern District of Virginia sentenced Ali Shukri Amin, 17, of Manassas, Va. to 136 months in prison along with a lifetime of supervision for conspiring to support a terrorist group, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the U. S. Department of Justice announced. Amin, who pled guilty on June 11, 201, admitted to using Twitter to provide advice and encouragement to ISIL....
The vast majority of funds comes through traditional channels and the banking system. To Bitcoin users, this will hardly be a surprise. For quite some time now, there have been unfounded rumors about the involvement of Bitcoin in terrorist funding. A new report by the UK parliament touches upon the funding of ISIL, and where the money is coming from. It is not surprising to see zero references to Bitcoin whatsoever. Instead, all of the money is coming through traditional channels. How ISIL Is Getting Its Funding Together. Cutting off the funding of terrorist groups such as ISIL is a top....
As told by Russian president Vladimir Putin on national television, the majority of the funding received by ISIL militants come from: Donations from rich political leaders in the Islamic state. Oil reserves. Putin and established financial institutions claim that the oil reserves of ISIL generate around US$500 million annually. "According to U. S. Department of the Treasury officials and data they released in the wake of the Paris mayhem, the terrorist group is actually taking in $500 million from oil a year," reported Bloomberg. The purchases of ISIL oil reserves and the donations from....