As a vegan, I often encounter religious arguments and scriptural references by so-called religious people to justify their slaughter or exploitation or abuse of animals. To me, it either projects their image as an ignorant or half-learned person or lowers the image of their own religion.

As a blockchain enthusiast too, religious philosophies come into play at times that question investing and trading in cryptocurrencies as a whole or in certain form of cryptocurrencies. Mostly people who are unaware of professional trading strategies, consider trading as a form of betting and term it as irreligious act.

_{Image credit: genebrooks}

Ambidant Scam in India

Recently, investigations by India's Enforcement Directorate led to unveiling of a fraudulent company viz. Ambidant that used to dupe Muslim investors. This appears to be the biggest scam after last year's Gain Bitcoin scam that involved celebrity endorsements and amounted to about 2000 crore rupees..

It turned out that father-son duo Syed Fareed and Syed Afaq Ahmed who ran Ambiant were also operating a ponzi investment scheme promising as high as 50% returns in less than 4 months.

Interestingly, they targeted the Indian Islamic community by promising of Halal investments alongside misused Ulemas (Islamic theology scholars) to position itself as a Sharia-compliant investment program for Muslim investors.

An offense to the Sharia Law?

So this company was not only defrauding Indian Muslim investors by running a ponzy investment scheme but it has been at odds with Sharia law itself. Many Islamic scholars are of the opinion that cryptocurrency trading is not a Halal practice because to fulfill the Sharia Law, a currency should have some intrinsic value and recognized by the ruler. Unfortunately, in present times, cryptocurrencies don't meet any of these conditions. So cryptocurrencies are not Halal and against the Sharia Law.

Amidst this backdrop, Jakarta based Blossom Finance published a working paper to clarify if Bitcoin is Halal or Haram:

Is Bitcoin Halal?
A Shariah Analysis

This study includes analysis of several Fatawah too and concludes that Bitcoin fully meets the definition of Islamic money under certain conditions:

bitcoin qualifies as Islamic money, except where banned by local government, but cautions investors against speculation, ICOs, and investment schemes

When this paper was published in April this year, it literally opened the cryptocurrency market to 1.6 billion Muslims around the world. This helped Bitcoin gain $1000 in its price at that time.

Just like many other social issues, the debate for Sharia compliance of cryptocurrencies is an ongoing one and probably won't be settled soon.

In the wake of this, I want to ask your stance on it. I see there are several Islamic followers on Steem ( ...a cryptocurrency) platform.

• So what's your take on religious compliance of cryptocurrencies and crypto tokens?