Hedera
HBAR#26HBAR is the coin of Hedera, a public ledger governed by a council of large companies, used to pay fees and stake to its nodes.
- Market cap
- $4.45B
- Volume 24h
- $170.6M
- All-time high
- —
- Circulating supply
- 44B of 50B
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 Hedera?8 Shariah criteria
8 pass · 0 caution · 0 failHolding HBAR pays nothing; optional staking rewards are variable, come from network fees and council transfers, and are not interest on a loan.
Riba means interest or any guaranteed increase on a loan. Simply holding HBAR earns nothing. The only native return is optional staking: an account stakes its HBAR to a consensus node, the coins never leave the account, and rewards are paid from account 0.0.800, funded mainly by a daily share of network fees and by transfers into it. The reward is not fixed: the council capped it at 2.5% a year in August 2023, it falls as more HBAR is staked and if 0.0.800 runs low, and on 27 September 2026 the maximum was about 1.9% a year.
No loan is involved, and Islamic Finance Guru (IFG), the authoritative source for Hedera, rates HBAR permissible. The score is 90 rather than 100 because staking is protocol-level delegation with no lock-up and no slashing (a penalty that destroys stake), so the staker earns passively without bearing protocol risk.
Hedera is a working network and HBAR is needed to use it; IFG, the authoritative source for Hedera, rates it permissible.
Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. Hedera has run since September 2019, with 29 consensus nodes hosted by companies such as Google, IBM and Deutsche Telekom, and HBAR is required to pay for transactions, token creation, smart contracts and consensus messages.
Official bodies disagree about cryptocurrency in general: Malaysia's Securities Commission Shariah Advisory Council (2020) treats it as tradable goods on registered exchanges, while Egypt's Dar al-Ifta (2017), the UAE General Authority of Islamic Affairs (2018), Turkey's Diyanet (2017) and Indonesia's MUI (2021) prohibit dealing in it; none names Hedera. That general dispute is reflected in confidence, not in this score. IFG rates HBAR permissible, and Sharlife, ShariaQuant, the Shariyah Review Bureau and CryptoUmmah also treat it as property with real utility, so the criterion gets the full score.
- Resolutions of the Shariah Advisory Council of the SC - Securities Commission Malaysia
- Ruling on trading and dealing in Bitcoin - Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah
- Kripto paraların kullanımının dini hükmü nedir? - Din İşleri Yüksek Kurulu (Diyanet)
- Keputusan Ijtima' Ulama Komisi Fatwa se-Indonesia VII tentang Hukum Cryptocurrency - Majelis Ulama Indonesia
HBAR is not a gambling token, though about four-fifths of its exchange trading is in futures.
Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through productive exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and HBAR has no chance-based payout of its own; it pays for the network's services, and memecoin and gambling activity on the network was not shown to be large. The market around it is heavily speculative, though: on 27 September 2026 perpetual futures made up about 80% of HBAR/USDT volume on Binance, Bybit and OKX combined (about $55 million of futures against about $13.5 million of spot, a single-day snapshot). That lowers the score within pass.
Network income is fees for services, which fund node and staking rewards; the council's treasury pays for development, grants and staff.
This criterion asks how the issuer or protocol earns, and whether any of that income is impermissible. Hedera earns fees for processing transactions, creating tokens, running smart contracts and recording consensus messages; a share of these fees funds node and staking rewards. The Hedera Council is not a company that pays profits to HBAR holders: its treasury of HBAR is allocated to ecosystem and open-source development (50.61%), purchase agreements (25.40%), network governance and operations (16.23%) and initial development and licensing (7.77%), and the treasury report does not mention
lending or interest-earning investment of treasury HBAR. No impermissible income was found, so the criterion gets the full score; the full use of sale proceeds by council entities is recorded as a data gap.
Supply, code and treasury reports are public, but a council of companies runs every node and releases treasury HBAR at its discretion.
Gharar is excessive uncertainty or hidden information in a deal. Much is transparent on Hedera: the total supply is fixed at 50 billion and can change only with unanimous council consent, the consensus node software is open source (Apache-2.0, Hiero project), and the council publishes a quarterly treasury report. Concrete points about control lower the score: all 29 consensus nodes are hosted by council members, HBAR holders have no protocol vote, and the council decides when HBAR leaves its treasury.
Its report of 3 September 2026 forecasts released supply rising from about 43.50 billion at the end of Q2 2026 to about 47.35 billion in Q3 2026, and on 27 September 2026 roughly 3.5 billion HBAR of that had not yet been released. Because the releases are forecast in published reports, IFG rates HBAR permissible and this stays a low pass rather than caution.
Hedera is used mainly as infrastructure (fees, tokens, consensus messages); interest-based lending on it is small.
This criterion looks at what the network is actually used for. HBAR pays for Hedera's services: token issuance, smart contracts and the consensus service that records time-stamped messages for applications. On-chain finance is small: on 27 September 2026 DefiLlama showed about $39 million of DeFi value locked and about $28 million of dollar stablecoins on Hedera, and the largest lending protocol, Bonzo Lend, held about $5 million. Interest-based lending exists but is a minor activity, not the network's purpose, so the criterion gets the full score.
Fully paid spot HBAR is widely available, can be held in one's own wallet, and a US fund holds HBAR itself.
This criterion asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible way. HBAR trades spot, with full payment and delivery, on major exchanges such as Binance, Bybit and OKX, and it can be withdrawn to a self-custody account; the Canary HBAR ETF (Nasdaq: HBR) also holds HBAR directly with BitGo and Coinbase Custody. Ownership does not depend on derivatives or leveraged wrappers, so the criterion gets the full score; the structure of funds is assessed under trading mechanisms.
Hedera offers low-cost infrastructure used by established companies; recorded harms such as a 2023 exploit were limited.
Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit is a working, low-cost public ledger governed by known organisations, with open-source software. Recorded harm is limited: on 9 March 2023 an attacker exploited the smart contract service and took about $600,000 from DEX liquidity pools before it was patched on 11 March 2023, and no large-scale fraud or sanctions-evasion use of HBAR was found. Harm therefore does not weigh against the benefit and the criterion gets the full score; speculative trading losses are counted under maysir.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesBuying HBAR with full payment and immediate delivery is widely available on major exchanges, and coins can be moved to a self-custody account. Spot is acceptable for a HALAL-rated asset and is the route IFG approves.
The Canary HBAR ETF (HBR) holds HBAR itself with BitGo and Coinbase Custody, and its page does not describe staking or lending. Its full prospectus terms on borrowing and lending were not verified, so the fund is rated caution until its structure is checked.
Tier-1 bodies such as Indonesia's MUI rule that using cryptocurrency as currency is not permissible, and several countries restrict paying with crypto.
Native staking keeps HBAR in your own account with no lock-up and no slashing, and rewards (capped at 2.5%, about 1.9% on 27 September 2026) come from network fees and transfers into the reward account. Because the staker takes no risk and all nodes are run by the council, it is unclear whether the reward pays for real validation work, so it is rated caution. Liquid staking (such as Stader's HBARX) and exchange staking add an intermediary and are also caution.
Margin trading in HBAR is offered on major exchanges but is never acceptable: it is a deferred exchange with borrowed money and leverage (AAOIFI SS 20).
HBAR futures and perpetual contracts make up about 80% of its exchange volume, but futures, perpetuals and options always fail under AAOIFI SS 20: deferred exchange without delivery, usually with leverage.
Lending HBAR on platforms such as Bonzo Lend or through exchange lending programmes pays depositors interest from borrowers. This is riba.
HBAR yield products built on lending, leveraged looping or basis trading pay interest or interest-like returns and fail. Native staking is assessed separately above.
Scholars quotes
Hedera (HBAR) is classified as Halal based on a three-layer Shariah screening of its infrastructure, application, and asset qualification.Based on a reassessment conducted by the Sharia Committee on 21 January 2026, the status been updated to compliant.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.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.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
Similar halal assets
Halal verdict, same category
