Bitcoin
BTC#1Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency secured by an open network with no central issuer.
- Market cap
- $1.7T
- Volume 24h
- $46.44B
- All-time high
- —
- Circulating supply
- 20.09M of 21M
Passes all 8 Shariah criteria.
- 8 pass
- 0 caution
- 0 fail
Verdict history
- HalalCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold Bitcoin?8 Shariah criteria
8 pass · 0 caution · 0 failHolding bitcoin earns nothing: the protocol pays only miners, with new coins and fees, for securing the network.
Riba means interest, or any fixed increase on a loan. The Bitcoin whitepaper and code pay new coins (the block subsidy, 3.125 BTC per block since the April 2024 halving) plus transaction fees only to miners, in exchange for proof-of-work. Nothing in the protocol lends money or pays holders a return, so simply holding BTC produces no income and the score is the maximum. Interest appears only in products built around Bitcoin, such as lending protocols where supplier yields come from borrower interest; these are assessed under trading mechanisms and do not change the asset itself.
Bitcoin is a working network with real use; Islamic Finance Guru rates it permissible as a digital asset.
Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. Bitcoin plainly works: it has run since its genesis block on 3 January 2009, and its hashrate was about 969 EH/s on 16 September 2026. Islamic Finance Guru, the first-priority authoritative source, rates Bitcoin permissible and treats it as a digital asset; Malaysia's Securities Commission Shariah Advisory Council (2020) also classes such digital currency as goods ('urudh) tradable on registered exchanges.
Some official bodies, such as Egypt's Dar al-Ifta (2017), Turkey's Diyanet (2017) and Indonesia's MUI (2021), prohibit cryptocurrency in general; that is a dispute about crypto as a whole, not a defect specific to Bitcoin, so it is reflected in confidence rather than in this score. There is no Ponzi structure or empty claim, so the score is the maximum.
Bitcoin is not a gambling product, but trading around it is dominated by leveraged derivatives.
Maysir is gambling: gaining or losing by chance rather than through real exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and Bitcoin has a real function as a settlement network and a store of value, with no lottery-like mechanics. However, derivatives made up 79.3% of centralised-exchange crypto volume in August 2026 ($3.40 trillion of $4.29 trillion), and big moves are often driven by leverage, such as the late-August 2026 rally from about $62,000 to $80,000, powered mainly by short covering.
That concrete speculative pattern lowers the score within pass; derivatives themselves are assessed under trading mechanisms.
There is no issuing company; new coins go only to miners as payment for validating transactions.
The revenue thresholds (below 5% from clearly impermissible sources, below 20% from disputed ones) apply to an issuer's or a protocol's economics. Bitcoin has no issuer, no treasury and no reserves: bitcoin.org describes a network that nobody owns or controls. The only income in the system is what miners earn, the block subsidy plus transaction fees, which is payment for a service. Fees are small today, about $237,000 a day on average in late August and early September 2026. None of this income comes from interest, gambling or prohibited industries, so impermissible revenue is effectively 0%.
With no concrete problem found, the score is the maximum.
Supply, code and rules are public and checkable by anyone; the risks that remain are concentration and technology, not hidden terms.
Gharar is excessive uncertainty about what is being bought. Bitcoin's 21 million cap is a consensus rule that every node checks; about 20,085,368 BTC (95.64%) existed on 16 September 2026, with no premine and no unlocks. The code is open source, and rule changes need broad agreement: in August 2026 the BIP-110 soft fork got only about 2.5% of miner signalling and failed.
The score is lowered slightly within pass for two concrete, non-contractual risks: the top five mining pools produced about 77% of blocks in the week to 16 September 2026, and Google Quantum AI researchers estimate that about 6.7 million BTC sit in addresses with exposed public keys that a future quantum computer could target.
Bitcoin is used mainly as a store of value, an investment and a settlement network; illicit use is a small share.
The main uses are permissible: long-term saving, investment through spot holdings and funds, and transfers. US spot Bitcoin ETFs held about $103 billion on 3 September 2026, and BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust alone reported net assets of about $59.7 billion on 15 September 2026. Chainalysis estimates that illicit addresses received less than 1% of attributed on-chain crypto volume in 2025, and stablecoins, not Bitcoin, carried 84% of that; a Bitcoin-only share is not published. There is no sign of a notable share of disputed use specific to Bitcoin.
With no concrete problem in how Bitcoin is used, the score is the maximum.
Bitcoin can be bought fully paid on the spot and held directly, and plain spot funds exist.
Fully paid spot purchase with immediate delivery is widely available on regulated platforms, including exchanges registered with Malaysia's Securities Commission, whose Shariah Advisory Council allows trading on them. The Halogen Shariah Bitcoin Fund in Malaysia, advised by Amanie Advisors, held 99.75% bitcoin and 0.25% cash on 30 April 2026, and the iShares Bitcoin Trust holds bitcoin and non-interest-bearing cash. Permissible ownership is therefore fully available, and the score is the maximum; margin and futures are not permissible and are assessed separately below.
Bitcoin offers open, hard-to-censor saving and transfer; its energy use and misuse are real but moderate harms.
Maslahah is the balance of benefit and harm to society. On the benefit side, Bitcoin gives anyone access to a savings and transfer network without a bank, and the Human Rights Foundation's Bitcoin Development Fund has funded nearly 300 projects in 62 countries, focused on open-source privacy and censorship-resistance tools for human rights defenders under authoritarian regimes. On the harm side, Cambridge (April 2025) estimated mining uses about 138 TWh a year, about 0.5% of global electricity, with 52.4% of its energy from renewables and nuclear.
Ransomware payments across all crypto were more than $820 million in 2025, and custody failures such as the 2026 Coldcard exploit hurt users. Benefit is clear and harm is moderate rather than dominant, so this is a pass; the energy use is a concrete harm that keeps it below the maximum.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesFully paid purchase with immediate delivery and no borrowing. Acceptable for a HALAL asset; widely available on regulated platforms, such as exchanges registered with Malaysia's Securities Commission.
Funds that hold bitcoin itself are judged like spot. The iShares Bitcoin Trust holds bitcoin and non-interest-bearing cash, and its custodian may not lend or pledge the bitcoin without the Trust's consent; it can use a short-term, interest-free trade credit secured by a lien. The Halogen Shariah Bitcoin Fund in Malaysia is Shariah-advised and held 99.75% bitcoin. Check each fund's structure: only these two were reviewed, and no Shariah ruling on US spot ETFs was found.
Tier-1 bodies prohibit crypto as a means of payment: Indonesia's MUI (2021) holds its use as currency haram, Turkey's Diyanet (2017) holds that cryptocurrencies with serious uncertainty and pyramid-like unjust enrichment may not be used, and Malaysia's Federal Territories Mufti (2018) prohibited using Bitcoin as currency. Paying with crypto is also banned by law in Indonesia and Turkey.
Not available natively: Bitcoin uses proof-of-work, so there is no staking. Third-party structures such as Babylon lock BTC to help secure another network, with slashing risk and rewards paid in another token; the structure is disputed and no Shariah ruling on it was found.
Always fail: borrowing to trade with leverage, without full delivery (AAOIFI SS 20).
Always fail: futures, perpetuals and options are deferred exchanges without delivery, with leverage.
Lending BTC for a return is interest (riba). On lending protocols such as Aave, supplier yields are funded by borrower interest, and centralised earn accounts pay returns from lending customer coins.
Bitcoin itself pays holders nothing, and the common BTC yield products (earn accounts, lending of wrapped BTC) get their return from interest. Babylon-style rewards for locking BTC are a separate, disputed case with no ruling found, closer to caution; no BTC yield product paying for real network work was identified.
Scholars quotes
Because there are no secondary opt-in mechanisms like native staking or liquidity pools, the Halal ruling applies straightforwardly to holding and using the asset.The opinion on this is the same as doing the same with any halal assets such as shares – 1) is permissible, 2) is more debatable and there are differing opinions on short-term trading.Bitcoin aligns with Shariah principles due to its nature as a cryptocurrency that operates without interest or central control.All investments of the Fund are Shariah-compliant, and the Fund is endorsed by Amanie Advisors, a registered Shariah Adviser under the Securities Commission Malaysia.In conclusion, while the Fiqh Council agrees with the position of those scholars and Fatwa committees that state Bitcoins are essentially ḥalāl , it also stresses that the Sharīʿah commands Muslims to be wise with their wealth and not waste it.The paper concludes that Bitcoin fully meets the definition of Islamic money under certain conditions and is generally permissible under Shariah.As I mentioned at the beginning of this article it is not necessary to substantiate the permissibility of something as long as there are no prohibited factors involved in it or surrounding it.Penggunaan cryptocurrency sebagai mata uang hukumnya haram, karena mengandung gharar (ketidakjelasan), dharar (bahaya) dan bertentangan dengan Undang-Undang nomor 7 tahun 2011 tentang Mata Uang dan Peraturan Bank Indonesia nomor 17 tahun 2015 tentang Kewajiban Penggunaan Rupiah di Wilayah Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia.Sebagaimana mata wang yang lain, mata wang digital hendaklah tidak digunakan sebagai bayaran kepada barangan, perkhidmatan dan aktiviti tidak patuh Syariah seperti pembelian dadah, pelacuran, perjudian dan pendanaan aktiviti keganasan serta penggubahan wang haram.The SAC has also resolved that investment and trading of Digital Assets that fulfil the above requirements and which are traded on Digital Asset Exchange (DAX) registered with SC are permissible.Third: In light of the above and given the significant risks associated with this type of currencies and the instability of their transactions, the Council of the Academy recommends pursuing research and studies on issues affecting its ruling.Oleh kerana itu, penggunaan Bitcoin yang ada pada masakini sebagai satu mata wang adalah dilarang bagi memelihara kemaslahatan umum.Bitcoin is a digital currency that does not meet the legal and Sharia criteria that make it a currency subject to the rulings of dealing with official legal currencies recognized internationally.بناءً على ذلك: فلا يجوز شرعًا تداول عملة "البتكوين" والتعامل من خلالها بالبيعِ والشراءِ والإجارةِ وغيرها، بل يُمنع من الاشتراكِ فيها؛ لعدمِ اعتبارِها كوسيطٍ مقبولٍ للتبادلِ من الجهاتِ المخُتصَّةِ، ولِمَا تشتمل عليه من الضررِ الناشئ عن الغررِ والجهالةِ والغشِّ في مَصْرِفها ومِعْيارها وقِيمتها، فضلًا عما تؤدي إليه ممارستُها من مخاطرَ عاليةٍ على الأفراد والدول.According to research and opinion of experts so far, cryptocurrency is not considered ‘ maal ’ (wealth) in Sharia.Muhammadiyah memandang transaksi dan investasi kripto pada dasarnya mubah (boleh) tetapi dengan syarat tertentu.Our current position is 'tawaquf'; we can't say it is halal or haram, but we say it is better not to engage in itAI-assisted analysis checked against sources. Not a fatwa or investment advice.
Where it trades
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