The Muslim Crypto Community worldwide: hunger for innovation & invigorating ingenuity

Islam is the second largest religion worldwide and the 1.8 billion followers[1] are loyal to their beliefs but also don’t want to miss out on the opportunities and developments of the modern financial world. We have taken a closer look at predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East to gauge the current state of crypto-friendliness, despite the ongoing haram-halal debate among Islam scholars.

Let’s start with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). A study by KuCoin[2] recently analyzed the crypto inclination of the Kingdom and discovered surprising results. Among a population of nearly 36 million, 3 million Saudis claimed to already have invested in crypto and a further 3.6 million indicated to be curious about the crypto market.

Saudi Arabia is not the only country in the Middle East to be hungry for crypto. Within the community, Bahrain is well-known as being a crypto-friendly country. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) demonstrate a clear will to become a global hub for crypto and digital assets. Several of its emirates recently upstaged each other with their announcements of advantages for crypto firms and tech start-ups.

The crypto landscape in the UAE has even been called the fastest growing in the world.[3]

What is clear is that despite the lengthy halal or haram debate, that is likely to continue in the years to come, Muslim countries are taking strides into positioning themselves as leaders in the new crypto and blockchain sectors. And so do its people, coming up with ingenious ideas of how to be part of this new world, while staying true to their faith. To finish off the article, we want to highlight a couple of outstanding projects, that have been already created for or by Muslim crypto enthusiasts:

· CoinMENA*: a sharia-compliant exchange, licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain;

· CryptoHalal App*: an intelligent decision-making tool to determine Sharia compliance of cryptocurrencies;

· Kinesis Money*: an Indonesian government-supported platform, that offers stablecoins with gold and silver backing;

· One Gram*: a gold-backed cryptocurrency founded by a sharia-compliant UAE start-up;

· Caizcoin*: a German-founded sharia-compliant financial ecosystem, that provides users with fair and easy access to ethical financial products and services;

· CryptoHashReview*: — The Islamic Take on Crypto: an educational platform dedicated to give Islamic guidance to crypto-curious Muslims.

* SALAMANTEX is in no way affiliated with the above-mentioned brands and products. The list aims at giving a glimpse into the ingenuity of the Muslim crypto community and is by no means exhaustive.

We asked SALAMANTEX CEO René Pomassl for his opinion: “I have seen with my own eyes that the Middle East is truly on fire and can’t wait to shoot to the moon as the new global crypto and web3 hub. Several countries in the region have already laid the ground work as a petri dish for all kind of blockchain innovations and we are sure that there are more developments and announcements already in the pipeline to not miss out on.”

[1] World’s largest religion by population is still Christianity | Pew Research Center

[2] KuCoin Into The Cryptoverse Reveals Increase In Number of Saudi Arabian Crypto Investors Adopting Auto-trading Strategies in Bearish Market | KuCoin

[3] Crypto landscape in UAE fastest growing in the world — News | Khaleej Times