Pepe
PEPE#50PEPE is a meme token on Ethereum with no intrinsic value or use beyond entertainment, themed on Pepe the Frog.
Does not clear all 8 Shariah criteria. Needs caution: excessive uncertainty (gharar) and benefit and harm (maslahah). Fails: nature of the asset, gambling (maysir), and usage.
- 3 pass
- 2 caution
- 3 fail
Verdict history
- DoubtfulCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold Pepe?8 Shariah criteria
3 pass · 2 caution · 3 failHolding PEPE pays nothing: the token has no staking, reward or interest function.
Riba means interest or any guaranteed increase on a loan. The PEPE contract is a plain ERC-20 token with transfer and burn functions and no staking, reward, interest or fee-sharing function, so simply holding PEPE produces no return of any kind. There are no transfer taxes that could be redistributed to holders. With no interest mechanism in the asset itself, the criterion is at the maximum; lending PEPE out through a third-party platform is interest and is covered separately under trading mechanisms.
The project itself says PEPE has no intrinsic value and is useless: there is no network, product or claim behind it.
This criterion asks whether the asset has real value: a working network, a utility, or a claim on something real, so that it counts as mal (property Islamic law recognises). PEPE has none of these. It runs on Ethereum and has no network of its own; gas is paid in ETH. It has no fee, staking or governance role, and it is not a claim on any asset. The project's own website calls it a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return and says it is completely useless and for entertainment only.
Sharlife argues that Shariah does not recognise assets without reasonable utility as valid subjects of sale, and CryptoUmmah calls it a meme token with no requirement for network operation. The token is still transferable, widely traded, and on Kazakhstan's list of authorised digital assets, and Malaysia's SC Shariah Advisory Council treats digital currency without an underlying as tradable goods, which is why the score is not at the bottom of the band. On the project's own description, though, it is an empty record with no utility. Islamic Finance Guru, the first-priority authoritative source, lists PEPE as halal without published reasons for this coin; this assessment departs from it here because the project's own statement that the token has no function or value is a concrete, coin-specific reason, and Sharlife and CryptoUmmah, which also list PEPE, rate it non-compliant on exactly this ground.
PEPE is a meme token without function, and about 90% of its exchange volume is futures: its value rests only on speculation.
Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through productive exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, but meme tokens without function are a clear case of an asset built for gambling. PEPE fits that description: the project says it has no intrinsic value, no formal team or roadmap and exists for entertainment, so its price depends only on what the next buyer will pay. The market confirms it.
On 27 September 2026 perpetual futures made up about 90% of combined PEPE spot and perpetual volume on Binance and Bybit (a single-day snapshot), and Binance's own futures volume was about nine times its spot volume. When Binance listed PEPE in 2023 it placed it in its higher-risk Innovation Zone and, as reported, said the token has no utility or value support. CryptoUmmah's audit also finds maysir. Islamic Finance Guru lists PEPE as halal, but gives no reasons that address the meme character of the token, so this criterion departs from it on the project's own description.
PEPE has no protocol, fees or treasury income, so there is no impermissible revenue to screen; the 2023 sale of team-wallet tokens is assessed under uncertainty and benefit.
This criterion asks how the issuer or protocol earns and whether any of that income is impermissible. PEPE has no protocol and no fees: the contract charges no transfer tax, and transaction fees go to Ethereum validators, not to a PEPE treasury, so there is no issuer income from interest, gambling or other prohibited activities. No source shows any impermissible revenue, so the criterion is at the maximum.
The project did keep part of the supply in a team multisig wallet (a wallet that needs several signatures), and in August 2023, CoinDesk reported, more than 16 trillion PEPE (about $15 million) from it were moved to exchanges and sold; that is a transparency and harm issue, counted under gharar and maslahah rather than here. Who holds team-linked tokens today is not disclosed and stays a data gap.
Supply is fixed and the contract can no longer be changed, but the team is anonymous and tokens from the team wallet were already moved to exchanges and sold once, in 2023.
Gharar is excessive uncertainty or hidden information in a deal. Some things about PEPE are fully transparent: all 420.69 trillion tokens were created at launch, the contract has no function to create more, its code is public and verified, and its ownership is renounced (the owner address is zero), so the blacklist and holding-limit switches in the code can no longer be used. Other things are hidden. There is no formal or named team. Binance's listing notice, as reported, pointed to signs that insiders bought 7% of the supply at launch.
In August 2023, CoinDesk reported, the multisig's signing threshold was changed from 5-of-8 to 2-of-8 and more than 16 trillion of its 26 trillion PEPE were moved to exchanges; the project blamed bad actors on its own team. What happened to the rest of the multisig's tokens is not disclosed, and several of the largest holders today are unlabelled wallets holding 1.5–6% of supply each. This matches the caution case: an anonymous team and possible large sales that holders cannot foresee.
PEPE has no payment, computing or infrastructure use; in practice it is used for speculative trading, mostly through futures.
This criterion looks at what the asset is actually used for. PEPE has no role in payments, computation or infrastructure, and it does not tokenise any asset. The project describes it as a coin for entertainment, and the only uses it lists are holding it and trading it on exchanges. That trading is dominated by derivatives: on 27 September 2026 about 90% of combined PEPE spot and perpetual volume on Binance and Bybit was perpetual futures, which is always impermissible. With speculation as the main purpose and no permissible use alongside it, this criterion fails.
The SEC staff likewise describe meme coins as bought for entertainment, social interaction and cultural purposes, with value driven mainly by speculation and limited or no use. Islamic Finance Guru lists PEPE as halal without reasons for this coin; the lack of any use beyond speculation is the concrete reason this criterion departs from it.
Fully paid spot PEPE is available on major exchanges and on Uniswap, and it can be held in any Ethereum wallet.
This criterion asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible way. PEPE trades spot, with full payment and delivery, on large exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Robinhood, Bybit and Upbit, and on the decentralised exchange Uniswap. It is an ordinary ERC-20 token that can be withdrawn to a self-custody wallet, and with the contract's ownership renounced nobody can freeze or blacklist it. Ownership therefore does not depend on derivatives or leveraged wrappers, even though those dominate trading volume.
Nothing about ownership itself is restricted or interest-based, so the criterion is at the maximum.
PEPE offers little benefit beyond entertainment, and its history includes reported insider buying at launch and a $15 million transfer from the team wallet that the project blamed on its own team.
Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit PEPE offers is limited to entertainment and community around a meme; the project itself claims no other. The harms are concrete. Binance's listing notice, as reported, pointed to signs that insiders bought 7% of the supply minutes after launch. In August 2023 more than 16 trillion PEPE (about $15 million) were moved from the project multisig to exchanges and sold; the project blamed bad actors on its own team, and CoinDesk reported that the transfers contributed to a fall of nearly 20% in the price.
PEPE is not shown to be a tool for fraud or sanctions evasion as such, so the status is caution rather than fail, at the low end of the band. Speculative trading losses are counted under maysir, not again here.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesBuying PEPE with full payment and immediate delivery is widely available on major exchanges and on Uniswap, and the tokens can be moved to a self-custody wallet. Spot is acceptable for a DOUBTFUL asset for those who follow the permissive view, but PEPE fails the gambling, nature-of-asset and usage criteria.
Not available: no fund holding PEPE had launched by 27 September 2026. A Canary PEPE ETF filed a registration statement with the SEC on 8 April 2026. A fund that holds PEPE itself would be judged like spot, and its structure (no interest income, no lending of the tokens) would need checking.
PEPE is not used as a means of payment in practice. Tier-1 bodies such as Indonesia's MUI rule that using cryptocurrency as currency is not permissible.
Not available natively: PEPE is not a proof-of-stake coin and has no staking function, so there is no validation work to be paid for. Products marketed as PEPE staking or earn get their return from somewhere else, usually lending, and must be checked; lending-based ones fall under lending and yield.
Margin trading in PEPE is widely offered but is never acceptable: it is a deferred exchange with borrowed money and leverage (AAOIFI SS 20).
PEPE perpetual futures made up about 90% of its spot and perpetual volume on Binance and Bybit on 27 September 2026, but futures, perpetuals and options always fail under AAOIFI SS 20: deferred exchange without delivery, usually with leverage.
Lending PEPE through exchange or DeFi lending programmes pays depositors interest from borrowers. This is riba.
PEPE itself pays holders nothing, and it has no network work to reward. Any yield product on PEPE therefore gets its return from lending or similar interest-like sources, and fails.
Scholars quotes
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.Consequently, simply buying and holding the token is rated as Haram (impermissible).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.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.Our current position is 'tawaquf'; we can't say it is halal or haram, but we say it is better not to engage in itAs 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.AI-assisted analysis checked against sources. Not a fatwa or investment advice.
Where it trades
Section in preparation
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