Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday 23 October 2026 that he had asked for a plan to help Israel’s economy get around possible banking sanctions, and that blockchain is one of the ways it could do so. He spoke in an interview on an Israeli economy-news television channel, four days before the 27 October Knesset election, according to Ynet and i24NEWS. No document, agency, token, network or timetable has been made public.
The remark was one answer to one question from the interviewer, Roi Katz (Ynet spells it Roy). i24NEWS names the channel as Channel 10; Ynet calls it Israel’s Economy Channel. Coindaro could not view the broadcast or a transcript. The quotes below are English translations from Hebrew published by the outlets named, and their wording differs slightly from one outlet to the next.
What Netanyahu said about blockchain and sanctions
Both Israeli outlets quote him saying “Of course I’m concerned” when asked about economic sanctions. In Ynet’s version he went on: “You have to understand that there could be sanctions, including banking sanctions.” Then: “You need to prepare an economy that can get around them.” And a moment later: “You know about digital currencies, and I’m working on that too.”
The interviewer asked whether he meant blockchain. Ynet renders the answer as “Yes, that’s one of the ways”; i24NEWS as “One of them, certainly.” Both then report the same sentence, “I’ve already asked for a plan to be prepared”, with i24NEWS adding “for it” at the end. Decrypt has a third translation: “I have already asked for a plan to be prepared for that.”
He did not say who had been asked, what the plan would contain or when it would be ready. According to the reports, he named no cryptocurrency, stablecoin or central bank digital currency. i24NEWS says he spoke more generally of preparing alternative financial arrangements and of currencies that could help get around banking restrictions, without naming any.
Headlines in the crypto press varied. Bitcoin.com News wrote that Netanyahu “orders” a blockchain plan, and Decrypt that he is “considering” one. The words the outlets quote are narrower: he said he had asked for a plan to be prepared.
US aid and a ‘rainy day’ in the same interview
The blockchain answer came in a wider passage about self-reliance. Ynet quotes Netanyahu saying US military aid would not continue “because America has changed”, and adding: “It’s over. It’s only a matter of time.” Neither Ynet nor i24NEWS reports a date. Decrypt notes that the current US aid agreement provides $3.8 billion a year and expires in September 2028.
Decrypt also quotes him saying “We must prepare for a rainy day” and that he wants “independence in weapons production, just as I wanted energy independence.” He said India, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was discussing production cooperation with Israel, Decrypt reports, without giving details.
Which banking sanctions Israel could face
No outlet that reported the interview says which measure Netanyahu had in mind. Coindaro found no sanction in force today against Israeli banks or against Israel’s payment system. The risk he described is a possibility debated in Israel, not an event that has happened.
The closest concrete step is British. On 8 September 2026 Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced a ban on imports of goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, to be in place in six to nine months, and a bar on companies providing services to settlements, including financing, construction, infrastructure, real estate and advertising, NBC News reported. France and Canada announced similar action. Cryptoast and Calcalist count 12 countries, the UK included, behind the September statement. NBC reported that Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, called the decision “despicable”, and that the economic effect was likely to be limited because settlements export little, mostly farm produce.
The banking concern comes from the services part. In a 15 October piece in Calcalist, Elah Alkalay, chair of IBI Mutual Funds, said a worst case would reach beyond contractors to their suppliers and financiers, exposing banks and non-bank lenders. The damage would be greater still, she said, if international payment systems came within the scope of the British regime. She argued that the local market, bank valuations included, had not priced that risk in. A Haaretz analysis published on 2 October asked in its headline why Israel’s banks were silent on the threat.
Ynet cites a Jewish People Policy Institute database that counted 139 measures across 64 countries and bodies as of 18 October: 111 active (17 of them academic), 19 historical and 9 proposed or planned. An earlier breakdown cited by Ynet put financial measures at 40, about a third of the total. Ynet also reports a warning letter from the Economists Forum signed by more than 60 economists, academics and former senior officials.
Why crypto is a limited way around sanctions
Sending tokens from one wallet to another needs no bank. Turning them into money that pays salaries or suppliers usually does, through an exchange or a bank that must itself apply sanctions. Decrypt puts it plainly: blockchains are public and traceable, so crypto is “not an easy escape from sanctions”. Bitcoin.com News and Crypto Briefing make the same point.
Israel has used that traceability itself. On 1 July 2026 Defense Minister Israel Katz signed sanctions orders on 37 crypto wallets holding more than 24 million shekels, which Israel says belong to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and were used to fund Hezbollah, according to Decrypt and the National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing. In September 2025, according to Cryptoast citing the analytics firm Elliptic, the same bureau sought the freezing of 187 wallets that had received about $1.5 billion in USDT.
Stablecoin issuers can also freeze tokens. Decrypt reports that Tether froze $344 million in April working with US authorities, and $131 million in July in wallets tied to Iran’s central bank and armed forces. US Senate staff have questioned how quickly it acts, as set out in our report on Tether’s freezes of Hezbollah-linked wallets; the company’s freeze policy is described on our Tether project page.
The precedents cited by the crypto press point both ways. Decrypt, citing Elliptic, says Russia’s ruble stablecoin A7A5 moved about $102 billion in its first year, before sanctions and a hack of its main exchange cut daily volume by 96% from the peak. Russia’s central bank has since licensed 17 crypto exchangers, as covered in our story on the Russian licences and the Sberbank and VTB plans. For Iran, Cryptoast cites a US Senate report from late September that found 84% of 846 sanctioned wallets tied to Tehran and its proxies operated almost only in USDT.
Payment networks are adding checks too. Mastercard will score stablecoin payments for fraud and sanctions risk before the money moves, as described in our report on Mastercard’s stablecoin risk scoring.
Crypto inside Israel today
The domestic market is a separate matter. Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest bank, said on 14 August 2026 that clients of its Leumi Trade app would be able to trade bitcoin, ether and solana through Galaxy Digital, with a launch expected in early 2027 pending Bank of Israel sign-off, Decrypt reported. No source links that project to Netanyahu’s request.
What is still unknown about the plan
As of Saturday morning Coindaro found no clarification from the Prime Minister’s Office, no statement from the Bank of Israel or the Finance Ministry, and no reaction from opposition parties or the Israeli crypto industry to the blockchain remark. The open points:
- Who was asked to draft the plan, and whether the Bank of Israel, the Finance Ministry or the counter-terror-financing bureau is involved.
- Which currency or network it would use: a stablecoin, a public blockchain or something else.
- Whether it is a formal government workstream, with a deadline or an approval step.
- Whether banking sanctions will be imposed at all, and by whom.
- The exact Hebrew wording, since the English translations differ.
The election is on 27 October. The British ban on settlement goods is due six to nine months after 8 September. In mid-October Alkalay said there “may be a window of at least two months to take action”. A plan document, or an official account of one, is what to watch for next.