Litecoin
LTC#20LTC is a Bitcoin-derived cryptocurrency for payments, with faster block times and optional privacy.
Passes our 8 Shariah criteria. Needs caution: excessive uncertainty (gharar).
- 7 pass
- 1 caution
- 0 fail
Verdict history
- HalalCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold Litecoin?8 Shariah criteria
7 pass · 1 caution · 0 failHolding LTC 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. Litecoin's consensus code pays a block subsidy (6.25 LTC since August 2023, halving every 840,000 blocks) plus transaction fees only to the miner who produces a block, in exchange for proof-of-work. There is no staking, and nothing in the protocol lends coins or pays holders a return. Islamic Finance Guru (IFG) rates LTC permissible with the same reasoning as Bitcoin, so the criterion gets the maximum score.
Interest appears only in products built around LTC, such as exchange earn accounts, lending desks or a treasury company's covered-call programme, which are assessed under trading mechanisms.
Litecoin is a working payment network that has run since 2011, but official religious bodies disagree on whether cryptocurrency is property (mal).
Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. Litecoin plainly works: it launched on 13 October 2011, reached block 3,185,230 on 27 September 2026 and is secured by about 2.73 PH/s of Scrypt mining power, and US regulators name LTC as a digital commodity. Islamic Finance Guru (IFG), the first authoritative source in Liberandum's list, rates LTC permissible, and Sharlife and CryptoUmmah agree.
Some tier-1 bodies (Egypt, Turkey, the UAE, Indonesia's MUI) doubt cryptocurrency in general, but none names Litecoin, so that dispute is reflected in confidence and the 'disputed' flag rather than in this score.
- litecoinspace.org: tip height API
- litecoinspace.org: mining pools (1 week) API
- Application of the Federal Securities Laws to Certain Types of Crypto Assets and Certain Transactions Involving Crypto Assets (SEC Release Nos. 33-11412; 34-105020)
- Resolutions of the Shariah Advisory Council of the SC - Securities Commission Malaysia
LTC is not a gambling product, but its trading is dominated by leveraged futures.
Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through real exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and Litecoin has a real function as a payment network with no chance-based payout of its own. The score is lowered within the pass band because the market around it is dominated by derivatives: on 27 September 2026, LTC/USDT perpetual futures turned over about $182.8 million in 24 hours on Binance and Bybit, against about $38.1 million of spot trading, about 83% futures (a single-day snapshot).
CryptoUmmah also points to the project's 'memecoin' self-description as speculative framing, but LTC has no meme or betting mechanics.
There is no issuing company; new coins and fees go only to miners as payment for producing blocks.
The revenue thresholds (below 5% from clearly impermissible sources, below 20% from disputed ones) apply to an issuer's or a protocol's economics. Litecoin has no issuer, no treasury and no reserves: the only income in the system is the block subsidy plus transaction fees earned by miners, which is payment for a service, and the launch premine was only 150 coins. The non-profit Litecoin Foundation supports development but takes no share of block rewards and cannot issue LTC.
No impermissible income was found, so the criterion gets the maximum score; the Foundation's unreviewed accounts are recorded as a data gap.
The supply rules and code are public, but a 2026 flaw in the private MWEB layer let an attacker create coins out of nothing, and the fix needed frozen funds and a chain reorganisation.
Gharar is excessive uncertainty about what is being bought. The basics are transparent: the 84 million cap and the halving schedule are consensus rules in open-source code, and about 77.65 million LTC existed on 27 September 2026. The status stays caution for a concrete, recent failure: the optional MWEB layer hides amounts, so its balance can only be checked cryptographically, and that check failed in 2026.
On 17 March 2026 an attacker pegged out 85,034 LTC from MWEB using an input worth about 1.21 LTC; mining pools ran miner-only builds that froze the outputs, and the attacker returned about 84,184 LTC and kept an agreed 850 LTC bounty, which Charlie Lee covered so that the full amount was restored. On 25 April 2026 a second attempt produced a 13-block invalid chain that lasted more than three hours before a reorganisation removed it, and further soft-fork fixes activated in August and September 2026, the second before its public release. Mining is also concentrated: three pools produced about 70% of blocks in the week to 27 September 2026. IFG rates LTC permissible, but these events are documented in the Litecoin Foundation's own postmortem, so this criterion departs from a pass.
LTC is used mainly for payments, transfers and holding; its optional privacy layer is disputed by some regulators, but no evidence shows a notable share of impermissible use.
The main uses are permissible: cheap, fast payments and transfers, long-term holding, a regulated US spot fund (the Canary Litecoin ETF held 126,930 LTC at 30 June 2026) and corporate treasuries. Litecoin has no smart contracts on its base layer, so there is no on-chain lending or gambling built into it. The score is lowered for one concrete point: South Korea's five major exchanges delisted LTC in June 2022 because their anti-money-laundering law bans highly anonymous assets and MWEB hides amounts. Privacy of amounts is not impermissible in itself, and no study measures illicit MWEB use.
LTC can be bought fully paid on the spot and held directly, and a plain US spot fund exists.
Fully paid spot purchase with immediate delivery is widely available on major exchanges such as Binance and Bybit, and coins can be withdrawn to a self-custody wallet. In the US, the Canary Litecoin ETF (Nasdaq: LTCC) holds LTC itself with Coinbase Custody and BitGo, and its report to 30 June 2026 shows no interest income and no lending, staking or borrowing. Ownership does not depend on derivatives or leveraged wrappers, so the criterion gets the maximum score.
Litecoin gives cheap, open payments, but its privacy layer is treated as an anti-money-laundering risk in Korea and its 2026 exploit caused losses to third parties.
Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit is real: a working, low-cost payment network that has run for almost 15 years without an issuer, with optional amount privacy that protects ordinary users' financial information. The score is lowered for concrete harms: the 2026 MWEB rollback let double-spends hit cross-chain services, including 11,000 LTC swapped through NEAR Intents (about $600,000 of exposure per The Block), and South Korean regulators treat MWEB as incompatible with anti-money-laundering rules.
No evidence was found that Litecoin is mainly a tool for abuse; the integrity of the exploit fix itself is weighed under gharar.
- Major Korean exchanges delist Litecoin due to its new privacy features (The Block)
- Crypto Exchanges Delist Litecoin Over Privacy Feature Concerns (Decrypt)
- Litecoin rewrites three hours of history to undo its first major privacy-layer exploit (The Block)
- Litecoin MWEB Security Incident Postmortem (Litecoin Foundation)
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesFully paid purchase with immediate delivery and no borrowing, widely available on major exchanges, with the option to withdraw to your own wallet. Acceptable for a HALAL asset. LTC is not offered by South Korea's major exchanges since June 2022.
The Canary Litecoin ETF (Nasdaq: LTCC) holds LTC itself with Coinbase Custody and BitGo; its report for the quarter to 30 June 2026 shows no interest income and describes no lending, staking or borrowing, and it charges a 0.95% sponsor fee. It is small (about $5.3 million of net assets at 30 June 2026). No Shariah ruling on the fund was found; check any other fund's structure separately.
Tier-1 bodies prohibit crypto as a means of payment: Indonesia's MUI (2021) holds its use as currency haram and Turkey's Diyanet (2017) holds that such cryptocurrencies may not be used. Paying with crypto is also banned by law in Indonesia and Turkey. Payments are Litecoin's main purpose, so this matters more for LTC than for most assets.
Not available natively: Litecoin uses proof-of-work, so there is no staking. Products marketed as 'LTC staking' on exchanges are usually lending or pooled earn accounts, whose source of return must be checked; no Shariah ruling on them 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. LTC perpetual futures were about 83% of LTC/USDT volume on Binance and Bybit on 27 September 2026.
Lending LTC for a return, through exchange earn accounts or lending desks, pays interest from borrowers. This is riba.
Litecoin itself pays holders nothing, and the common LTC yield products (earn accounts, lending, covered-call options programmes such as Lite Strategy's) get their return from interest or options premiums. No LTC yield product paying for real network work was identified.
Scholars quotes
Based on this matrix, simply buying and holding LTC is Halal.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 of now, the projects provided by Litecoin appear to be in accordance with Shariah principles.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
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