Cronos
CRO#31CRO is the coin of Crypto.com and its Cronos blockchains, used to pay network fees, secure Cronos through staking and unlock app perks.
- Market cap
- $3.29B
- Volume 24h
- $15.12M
- All-time high
- —
- Circulating supply
- 49.76B of 100B
Passes our 8 Shariah criteria. Needs caution: business model and excessive uncertainty (gharar).
- 6 pass
- 2 caution
- 0 fail
Verdict history
- HalalCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold Cronos?8 Shariah criteria
6 pass · 2 caution · 0 failHolding CRO pays no interest; staking rewards on Cronos POS Chain are paid for validation, though a new time-locked bonus is funded from a reserve.
Riba means interest or any fixed increase on a loan. CRO pays nothing to its holder, and Islamic Finance Guru (IFG) rates CRO permissible with the same analysis as Bitcoin. Holders can delegate CRO to validators on Cronos POS Chain, and those rewards come mainly from newly created CRO plus transaction fees; this is payment for securing the network, not interest on a loan.
The score is lowered for one concrete feature: since the May 2026 upgrade, stakers may lock CRO for one, two or four years for a bonus rate paid at first from the CRO reserve, which looks more like a return for time than for work; this is assessed under staking below. Crypto.com Earn is an optional exchange product, assessed under yield products.
CRO pays fees on Cronos, secures its proof-of-stake chain and carries governance votes.
CRO pays transaction fees on Cronos EVM, secures Cronos POS Chain through staking and governance, and gives perks in the Crypto.com app. That is real utility, and IFG, Sharlife and CryptoUmmah all rate CRO permissible. Darul Uloom Karachi, Indonesia's MUI and state bodies in Egypt, Turkey and the UAE doubt cryptocurrency in general, but none names CRO or gives a concrete reason against it, so the criterion gets the maximum score.
CRO is not a betting token, but its issuer runs fast-growing prediction markets on sports and other events.
Maysir means gambling, or gains that depend mainly on chance; ordinary price swings are not maysir. CRO is not a meme or betting token: it pays fees and secures the Cronos chains, and it is not needed to place bets. The score is lowered within the pass band for a concrete link: its issuer, Crypto.com, runs Prediction Trading, Yes/No event contracts that pay $1 if correct, and in February 2026 launched OG, a standalone prediction market centred on sports, after what it called 40x growth of that business over six months. The issuer's revenue from these is weighed under business model.
Crypto.com earns from derivatives, event contracts and yield products, but it publishes no revenue split, so the 5% and 20% limits cannot be tested.
For exchange tokens, the test is the income of the exchange behind the token. IFG rates CRO permissible, but it does not test Crypto.com's revenue, and there is concrete, sourced evidence of disputed income: Crypto.com offers derivatives through its US arm CDNA, a CFTC-registered exchange and clearinghouse, including prediction contracts on sports and other events, which resemble betting, and it runs the OG platform and lists event contracts for operators such as FanDuel Predicts. AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard 20 treats futures without delivery as impermissible.
No public revenue breakdown for Crypto.com was found, so under the threshold rule (impermissible revenue shown to exist, share unknown) the criterion is caution, at the bottom of the band.
Supply is visible on-chain, but it has been changed by votes, including a disputed 2025 reissue of 70 billion burned CRO, and control is concentrated around Crypto.com.
Gharar means excessive uncertainty or hidden terms. CRO's total supply can be read from the chain (about 98.95 billion on 27 September 2026) and the client code is open source. But the rules have changed by vote: 70 billion CRO burned in 2021 were reissued in March 2025 into a 'strategic reserve', after about 3.35 billion CRO voted in the final hours and pushed turnout past quorum, and critics said Crypto.com controls those validators.
The reserve vests in equal monthly parts over five years (about 1.17 billion CRO a month since the March 2025 upgrade) for broadly stated purposes such as US initiatives, a CRO ETF and ecosystem grants, and a proposal now open would commit it to fund staking rewards, without a stated limit on how much. Cronos EVM validators are admitted by invitation. This partial opacity is caution; it is not fail, because supply changes have gone through public votes and are visible on-chain rather than made at will without disclosure.
CRO is mainly used as network fuel, for staking and governance, and for perks in the Crypto.com app; no reliable data show a notable share of disputed use.
CRO's main uses are permissible in themselves: paying fees on Cronos EVM, staking and voting on Cronos POS Chain, and membership perks in the Crypto.com app. The score is lowered slightly because some uses are disputed: CRO can be placed in yield products and in lending apps on Cronos, and Crypto.com pays bonus rewards in CRO on Earn. No source measures how much of CRO's use goes to these purposes, which is recorded as a data gap.
CRO can be bought and held outright, with full payment, on exchanges and in self-custody.
This criterion only asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible form. CRO is a native coin that can be bought on spot markets, paid in full and withdrawn to a personal wallet, and it is on the official lists of tradable crypto-assets in Indonesia and Kazakhstan. It does not exist only as a leveraged or derivative wrapper, so the criterion gets the maximum score.
The Cronos chains offer low-cost infrastructure; harms exist but do not dominate, and no sanctions or fraud finding against the issuer was found.
Maslahah means weighing real benefit against real harm. On the benefit side, Cronos offers low-fee transfers and applications and is used across a large consumer crypto app; the US SEC closed its investigation of Crypto.com in March 2025 without action, and no sanctions or fraud finding was found. The score is lowered for a concrete harm: the 2025 reserve vote showed how far a single company can change the rules for all holders. The issuer's betting-like event contracts are weighed under gambling and business model, not again here.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesSpot CRO with full, immediate payment is widely available and can be withdrawn to a personal wallet. Spot is acceptable for a HALAL-rated asset; the remaining doubts concern the issuer, not the spot method.
No fund that simply holds CRO was confirmed as trading. The proposed Truth Social Cronos Yield Maximizer ETF would stake its CRO through Crypto.com, so its structure would need a separate check if it launches.
CRO pays network fees on Cronos and is used within the Crypto.com app; no payment volume data were found. Tier-1 bodies such as MUI (Indonesia, 2021) prohibit crypto as a means of payment, so this use is caution.
Base staking on Cronos POS Chain pays for validation, mostly from new issuance and fees, which on its own would be acceptable. Since May 2026, time-locked positions of one to four years add a bonus rate paid first from the CRO reserve, a structure closer to a return for time; ShariaQuant flags the emission-funded yield. Plain delegation without a time-lock is the cleaner option.
Always fail: borrowing with leverage and deferred exchange without delivery (AAOIFI SS 20).
Always fail: futures, perpetuals, options and event contracts are deferred exchange without delivery, with leverage (AAOIFI SS 20).
Lending CRO for a fixed or guaranteed return is riba, whether through a platform or a lending app on Cronos.
Crypto.com Earn pays variable rewards, with extra CRO bonuses for some members, but its page does not say how rewards are generated; with the source unclear, this is caution. If a product's return comes from lending, it fails.
Scholars quotes
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.The meeting concluded that exchange tokens are compliant with Shariah principles, meaning they do not inherently pose any Shariah issues.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.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.Its Shariah status is Doubtful primarily due to its mixed staking yield mechanics, which include token emissions (inflation)—a scholar-debated mechanism.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
Section in preparation
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