Some of the newest efforts to provide specialized cryptocurrency on-ramps are dedicated to accommodating one of the world’s oldest religions: Samuel Haig reports at Cointelegraph today on a research project in Australia that’s likely to have an impact on the Muslim world, from the UAE to Indonesia and elsewhere.
“A team based out of Sydney, Australia is building what it claims is the world’s first ‘Shariah-guided’ decentralized finance platform to navigate a course between the advantages of DeFi and the beliefs of Islamic finance,” Haig writes. “The Marhaba Decentralized Financial Platform — Marhaba translates to ‘welcome’ in Arabic — is expected to launch in the coming months and seeks to offer the Islamic world a DeFi platform informed by the core tenets of Shariah.”
Although cryptocurrency is a hot sector right now, millions of Muslims have some specific misgivings about getting involved.
Those familiar with Islamic shariah law know that there are rules against usury and gambling, and really, any kind of excessive risk. That leads many Islamic investors to avoid strategies or assets related to extracting maximum capital out of some external entity in the way that Americans are known for post-Gordon-Gekko.
The Islamic shariah crypto system will set up a noncustodial wallet called the Sahal wallet ,and provide a list of shariah-compliant tokens including non-fungible tokens or NFTs.
Bitcoin might not be among them: Islamic scholars also provide a unique reason for avoiding the front-running cryptocurrency.
“If you don’t know who created it, that means the thing is under doubt,” said Blockchain Australia Solutions CIO and Marhaba’s CEO and founder, Naquib Mohammed, interviewed by Haig.
This interesting philosophical aspect of investment strategy underscores the reality that not all investors are solely guided by maximum value. Even among atheists and humanists the idea of socially conscious and green investing is taking off.
So if you have tech holdings, or you’re trying to make a secondary play in crypto, consider some of these developments.
