Nostr notes by thebitcoinguide

A must read. This perfectly explains the need for the Muslim ...

2026-09-01T21:56:43+02:00

A must read. This perfectly explains the need for the Muslim Bitcoin Summit

quoting
naddr1qq…4v65

Brother Michael's essay made a fairly straightforward argument, even if the implications of that argument are not straightforward at all. The monetary system we live under is structurally bound up with riba, and because that monetary system sits underneath nearly every other institution we interact with, the effects of riba do not remain confined to mortgages, credit cards, loans, or the more obvious transactions that Muslims have traditionally been taught to scrutinize. They seep outward into family life, saving, charity, business, Waqfs, our time preference, and eventually into the institutional forms of the constitution of the Ummah itself. Bitcoin, from this perspective, becomes interesting to Muslims not because it is a speculative asset to get rich, but because it offers a monetary system with very different properties, one that is not issued as debt and cannot be diluted at the discretion of governments or banks.

But once we accept that argument, even provisionally, another question follows, and I think this question is perhaps more interesting for understanding why the Muslim Bitcoin Summit exists in the first place.

What else is there?

When we ask that question, we really mean it in two related senses. First, if the problem begins with debt-based fiat money, what monetary alternative actually exists that does not simply reproduce the same architecture under another name? The previous essay made the case that Bitcoin is presently the most serious answer we have found. But there is another question that follows from it, and this is the one we are more interested in here: what else exists within the Muslim imaginary that takes a critique of the existing order and joins it to a set of practices ordinary Muslims can begin adopting without first capturing a government, or receiving institutional permission, or waiting for some future political settlement or moment?

We do not mean this in some melodramatic sense, as though Muslims have never built anything worthwhile in the modern world, or as though every Islamic institution outside of Bitcoin has failed and ought to be abandoned. That would plainly be ridiculous. There are Muslim charities that feed people, Islamic schools and seminaries that preserve knowledge, scholars who teach and issue fatawa, businesses employing thousands of Muslims, institutions distributing zakat, activists defending Muslim interests, and countless local masajid doing the unglamorous work of holding communities together. These things are good, and none of what follows should be interpreted as an argument against them.

Nonetheless, there is a deeper problem which, in our view, very few Muslim institutions are actually equipped to confront, insofar as almost all of them operate downstream from a monetary and technological order whose basic assumptions they simply accept as given.

An Islamic charity still holds its funds in fiat money. A Muslim startup still relies on banks, payment processors, app stores, cloud providers, subscription models, centralized user accounts, analytics companies and whatever other layers have become necessary to make a modern software slop company function. An Islamic school still has to operate within a regulatory and financial system that it did not design. A political movement ultimately has to win elections, influence governments, lobby or bribe the state, or somehow convince people who already control institutions of power to adopt its program. Islamic finance, perhaps most obviously, begins with the modern banking system as an established fact and then spends enormous intellectual and institutional energy trying to determine how Muslims can operate within it.

Be that as it may, there is an important distinction here between asking how Muslims can survive inside an existing system and asking whether Muslims should accept the structure of that system in the first place.

This is one reason why Islamic finance, as both a concept and application, has always seemed somewhat unsatisfying to many of us. Its problem is not simply that one may object to this murabaha contract or that sukuk structure, or accuse one financial product of resembling conventional interest too closely. Those arguments have gone on for decades and will likely continue long after we are gone. The more fundamental limitation is that Islamic finance usually begins with fiat money, central banking, inflation, debt markets and the architecture of modern finance as immovable features of reality, and from there asks how a Muslim might transact or invest without technically crossing one particular juridical boundary.

In other words, the question they have settled for is, how do we make modern finance halal? But, what we are trying to ask is something closer to: why should modern finance be the starting point at all?

The same institutional limitation exists elsewhere, although in different forms. Scholars and students of knowledge are indispensable insofar as we need them to preserve the deen, teach us its limits, explain its obligations and prevent us from simply making Islam conform to whatever technological enthusiasm happens to be fashionable this decade. But scholars are not software engineers, protocol designers, network architects or monetary economists merely by virtue of being scholars, and many scholarly institutions themselves are dependent upon governments, universities, donors, banks and regulatory regimes which naturally narrow the range of possibilities they are capable of seriously entertaining. Expecting the scholarly class to design the technical means of exiting the monetary system misunderstands the function of scholarship in much the same way that expecting a programmer to independently derive fiqh from first principles would misunderstand the function of programming.

Academia has a similar problem. It is very good at producing papers, describing crises, critiquing modernity, organizing conferences, forming committees and identifying an ever-growing vocabulary with which to explain why things are bad. Some (little) of that work is useful. But at some point we have to notice that a Muslim can read a hundred books and papers about financial and technological sovereignty and remain completely dependent on the same bank, the same operating system, the same social media platform and the same monetary infrastructure after finishing the hundredth paper.

And then there is Muslim tech, which perhaps deserves its own particular frustration because the possibilities ought to be so much greater than what we usually end up getting.

Almost always, "Muslim tech" means taking the same centralized model already produced by Silicon Valley, attaching Islamic branding to it, locking Muslims into a subscription, gathering the same user data and selling it to an Israeli tech startup, relying on the same cloud infrastructure and app stores, and then presenting the result as some kind of civilizational achievement because there is an Arabic word in the logo. We can make a Muslim social network, a Muslim AI assistant, a Muslim fintech app, a Muslim productivity platform, and yet insofar as the underlying infrastructure is still owned and permissioned by somebody else, the basic relationship has not changed very much. We have essentially created Muslim content inside a machine belonging to someone else, usually of Zionist orientation.

This is the point we are trying to get at. The problem facing the Ummah is not that we lack organizations, institutions, conferences, projects, apps, scholars, political theories or economic proposals. We have plenty of them. The problem is that most of these efforts remain subordinate to the monetary and technological substrate they claim, in one way or another, to resist.

And here we find that Bitcoin produces something rather unusual, because it does not merely give us another opinion about what is wrong. It gives us a certain praxis that we need to be paying attention to.

Look, we can spend another fifty years discussing the harms of riba, or we can begin reducing our exposure to riba-based money right now. We can complain about banks, or we can learn self-custody. We can discuss the dangers of centralized monetary authorities, or we can run a node and verify the monetary rules ourselves. We can criticize surveillance capitalism, or we can begin using free and open-source software, encrypted communications, self-hosted services and permissionless protocols. We can lament the weakness of Muslim institutions, or we can start forming direct economic and social relationships with other Muslims without waiting for a government ministry or a corporate platform to coordinate us.

None of these things individually constitutes some grand Islamic revival, obviously. Running Linux is not some act of clever statecraft, and operating a Bitcoin node does not magically restore the Waqf or resolve the political problems or conflicts of the Muslim world. But that is not really the point.

The point is that these practices begin altering our relationship with the institutions around us.

If a Muslim learns that he can hold his savings without a bank, something has changed in his imagination. If he can verify his own money without trusting a central authority, then perhaps verification should matter elsewhere too. If he can communicate over protocols that are not owned by a single corporation, perhaps the social networks through which Muslims organize do not have to depend upon a corporate moderator, an algorithm, or some gay Jewish oligarch in California deciding what is acceptable speech. If he can run software whose code is available to inspect and modify, perhaps technological dependence is not simply a fact of nature.

This is one way of understanding what we have called Digital Hijrah. It is not a rejection of technology, nor is it a fantasy of disconnecting from the modern world and retreating into some electronically fortified village where everyone runs a server and refuses to speak to anyone using Windows. It is, rather, the gradual and recurring process of recognizing which dependencies are unnecessary, which dependencies are dangerous, which dependencies compromise our values, and then deliberately replacing them where alternatives exist.

Bitcoin happens to be the most obvious place to begin because money sits underneath so much of this. And Bitcoin also introduces another peculiar feature which I think makes the Muslim Bitcoin movement different from many previous attempts at revival, that is, the praxis contains within it a positive feedback loop.

Consider that most movements require their participants to sacrifice now for some victory which may or may not arrive later. Join the organization, attend the meetings, donate money, distribute pamphlets, campaign, build membership, persuade the public, and perhaps after twenty or fifty years the political circumstances will change and something meaningful will finally happen (looking at you, Hizb ut-Tahrir)

We contend that Bitcoin produces a rather different and unfamiliar dynamic.

A Muslim begins stacking sats, usually for very ordinary reasons. He wants to save money in something that cannot be debased, cool. Over time he becomes more attentive to his time preference because saving is no longer merely holding a melting unit and hoping to outrun inflation. He learns proper self-custody, which forces him to learn responsibility because there is no customer service department that can reverse his mistakes. He learns how Bitcoin works, perhaps starts running a node, and suddenly concepts such as verification, trust minimization and sovereignty become more than abstractions.

Then these habits begin spreading. He starts asking why his money should be self-custodied while his data is not. Why should his financial life be sovereign while his communications remain entirely dependent on permissioned platforms? Why should he verify Bitcoin but blindly trust Google or Apple that controls everything else he does? Why should Muslims complain about censorship while building their communities on infrastructure capable of censoring them?

Then he meets other Muslims asking the same questions. Perhaps they begin transacting with each other. Perhaps one starts a business. Perhaps another teaches self-custody. Another sets up a Lightning node and opens up a channel with a friend. Another organizes a local Majlis. Another starts a Nostr relay. Another begins thinking about how a Waqf might operate on a Bitcoin standard, or how a masjid treasury might use multisig custody, or how Muslims in different countries might transfer value directly without passing through layers of correspondent Jewish owned banks.

And here there is perhaps a third sense in which we can ask the question, what else is there? Once the exit is no longer merely theoretical and Muslims begin practicing it together, what else might begin forming around that practice?

Something interesting happens at this point because there are really two recursive processes reinforcing one another.

The first is material. People accumulate savings, acquire technical knowledge and competence, reduce dependencies, build businesses/organizations and develop the capacity to undertake projects that would have been harder before. The people participating in the movement can become materially stronger through participation in the movement itself, and each successful act of exit creates additional capacity for another act of exit.

The second is more social and communal. People who repeatedly practice these things together develop a common language, shared norms, technical competence, trust and eventually a kind of "digital asabiyyah." Shared praxis makes cooperation easier; successful cooperation strengthens trust; greater trust makes more ambitious forms of coordination possible; and those new forms of coordination further reinforce the shared culture which produced them in the first place.

We think the two loops feed one another. Material sovereignty gives the network greater capacity to act, while social cohesion makes that capacity easier to coordinate. The community gradually becomes both more capable and more cohesive through the very practices that define it.

We might call this something like "recursive sovereignty," or where every successful act of exit creates additional capacity for another act of exit, while the relationships formed through that process make collective action increasingly possible and harder to stop.

This is one of the reasons Bitcoin Majlis does not quite resemble the Muslim organizations we are used to. It is not a political party, an NGO, a corporation, a tariqa, an academic institution, or an organization asking Muslims to subordinate themselves to some new hierarchy. The "toxic" Muslim Bitcoin culture that has emerged is far looser than that, and at times admittedly much harsher. It consists of Muslims from different countries, theological orientations and social backgrounds who share some fairly uncompromising assumptions about riba, Bitcoin, self-custody, sovereignty and the need to reduce dependence upon fiat institutions, even while they may disagree about almost everything else.

Muslim movements have historically struggled with the question of how much ideological agreement is required before Muslims can meaningfully organize together. If agreement requires identical views on politics, fiqh, madhhab, theology, methodology, geopolitics and every other controversy Muslim Twitter manages to discover, then very little coordination is possible outside increasingly narrow camps.

Bitcoin Majlis, by contrast, has emerged around something closer to a narrow but hard consensus.

Riba is destructive. Fiat money is structurally compromised. Bitcoin offers a credible monetary alternative. Permissionless self-custody or nothing. Muslims should become less dependent upon institutions whose incentives are hostile to them. Beyond this, there is considerable room for difference.

This creates the possibility of a network that does not need to grow in the way conventional organizations grow. There does not have to be one Bitcoin Majlis headquarters coordinating every Muslim Bitcoiner on earth. A group in London can organize one way, Somalis somewhere else can organize another, Malaysians another, and if different communities eventually establish their own relays, local gatherings, educational programs, businesses or charitable institutions, there is no contradiction in that. This is actually encouraged. The network can spointer and reproduce itself without everyone joining one bureaucracy.

In that sense, the model is more distributed, even somewhat swarm-like, although we do not mean that in the sense of disorder. It means that coordination can occur through shared protocols, norms and incentives rather than through a single chain of command. Our own notes (nevent1q…zhxh) on Bitcoin Majlis have described this as a movement without the usual institutional form, held together more by praxis, common protocolized culture and a rigid anti-riba monetary orientation than by membership in a formal organization.

This brings us back to the Muslim Bitcoin Summit.

If the Summit were merely two days of people explaining why Bitcoin has a fixed supply, that would be quite boring, and there would honestly be little reason for it to exist. There are already thousands of hours of podcasts, books, videos and conferences explaining Bitcoin, and nobody needs another man standing on a stage explaining the 21 million supply cap for the nine-thousandth time.

The reason for a specifically Muslim Bitcoin Summit is that something else is happening around the monetary question.

The Summit is where a network that usually exists across cyberspace, group chats, Nostr relays, online communities, local meetups and scattered friendships becomes physically present in one place. It is where Muslims can encounter people who have already begun applying these ideas to their own lives, not merely by buying Bitcoin, but by thinking seriously about self-custody, privacy, open-source software, business, family wealth, network states, charity and community institutions, riba and the question of what Muslim sovereignty could mean in an age increasingly defined by monetary instability, mass surveillance and accelerated AI development.

Perhaps most importantly, we are not trying to sell people another institution upon which they should become dependent. If anything, the opposite should be true.

The successful attendee of the Muslim Bitcoin Summit should leave needing fewer institutions than when he arrived.

He should understand his money better. He should understand custody better. He should understand the technological systems around him better. He should have met Muslims capable of helping him learn things which previously seemed inaccessible. He should leave with the uncomfortable realization that many of the dependencies he assumed were permanent are simply habits.

And this is ultimately why we keep returning to the question: what else is there?

Islamic finance can give us another fiat financial product. Muslim tech can give us another app. Academia can produce another critique. Political movements can give us another platform. NGOs can give us another campaign. Scholars can give us another fatwa. Again, all of these have their place, and we do not pretend otherwise.

But where else are Muslims gathering around an attempt to confront riba hegemony at the monetary layer of civilization while simultaneously giving ordinary Muslims the tools to begin acting upon that conclusion themselves?

Where else do we find monetary exit joined to technical praxis, self-custody joined to open-source software, sound money joined to long-term thinking, online networks joined to physical community, and individual sovereignty deliberately understood as something which should eventually strengthen families and communities rather than merely produce isolated individuals dependent on some state?

Perhaps some other movement will eventually answer these questions better than we do. That would be a good thing. Bitcoin Majlis does not need to become the official institution of anything, and the Muslim Bitcoin Summit does not need to become another annual conference whose continued existence becomes more important than the reasons it was created.

For now, however, we are telling you that something genuinely unusual is taking shape and you need to be paying attention to this.

There is a growing network of Muslims who are not merely criticizing the riba-based monetary system but gradually attempting to leave it without working within the confines of a gold standard or political movement, who are acquiring the tools necessary to make that exit real, who are learning to organize without waiting for permission, and who are discovering that every step toward greater individual and communal sovereignty can make the next step easier.

So after understanding why Bitcoin is important for Muslims, perhaps the next question is no longer whether we need a Muslim Bitcoin Summit.

The more interesting question is simply this:

What else is there?

Come to the next Muslim Bitcoin Summit in London on October 10th and 11th. Get your tickets here: https://mslmbtcsummit.com/

We look forward to seeing you there inshaAllah.

Allahu Akbar

2026-08-22T07:10:48+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…5nut
_________________________

Allahu Akbar

Answering a question that many may have #naddr1qq…ldw0

2026-07-31T17:27:41+02:00

Answering a question that many may have

quoting
naddr1qq…ldw0

I know what you might be thinking. A Muslim Bitcoin summit? Why on earth do we need one of those? Why is Bitcoin of any specific concern to Muslims, and why would we need our own dedicated event for it? And right behind that question, a sharper one: is this just someone using the label of Islam — preying on our faith — to pull us into a scam?

If that's where your mind went, good. You're right to be cautious. An unfortunate association with the broader "crypto" space has set us back a bit when it comes to understanding Bitcoin as Muslims: the coins, the tokens, the get-rich-quick schemes, the hustlers who dress a scam in religious language to separate believers from their money (you'll have noticed many "projects" like this popping up lately, intentionally named to try and draw Muslims in). Be sceptical of all of it. I know I am.

But here is my answer to your question, and I'll spend the rest of this piece making the case for it. There is a real reason this summit exists, and it has nothing to do with any of that. Muslims face specific problems, ones most of us have been living with our whole lives without ever being shown their shape. And Bitcoin, whatever you've been told it is, turns out to be a specific solution to those exact problems. That is the whole reason for a Muslim Bitcoin summit. It is not about the price and it is not about the hype. Nobody is trying to sell you their coin. These are problems that are uniquely ours, and there exists an answer to them.

So let me start by showing you these problems, of which you've almost certainly experienced the symptoms — if not directly, then indirectly — without ever being shown the cause.

Take a look around you. A home is out of reach without a mortgage. A car, without finance. An education, without a loan. Almost anything that you should reasonably expect to be able to attain in life now arrives with the same default payment mechanism attached, which is to borrow, and to pay interest on it for years. Riba is the thing our scriptures warn against more severely than almost anything else, yet somehow the entire structure of modern life has been arranged so that avoiding it means going without the basics. You've almost certainly noticed this reality. You may have wondered why doing the right thing has become so expensive.

But the even more uncomfortable truth is this: the riba isn't only in the mortgage, or the loan, or the credit card agreement — things you could choose to avoid at some personal sacrifice. It's in the money itself.

Let's start from the beginning with an explanation you may have heard before, but the importance of which cannot be overstated. Every pound in your bank account, or wallet, was created as debt, essentially lent into existence, at interest, by a bank that didn't even possess it a moment before. This is literally how the system functions. You don't need to take my word for it either. Central banks around the world are proud to tell you of this fantastic innovation of theirs, in published papers, for everyone to see[1][2]. Which means that in today's world, you don't just deal with riba when you sign a loan, as part of some conscious decision. You're already dealing with it in your daily life, every time you earn, every time you save, every time you pay your taxes. We are all participating in it without consent. And to be clear, that is not a criticism of you. You were born into this money, but you had no say in it. It's just the shape of the water we're all swimming in, and most of us have never once been shown its shape.

So far, two things. The money we use is born as debt, with riba baked in at the very moment it is created. And almost everything you need — a home, a car, an education — can now only be acquired by taking on debt of your own. What we haven't joined up yet is why the first makes the second unavoidable.

It's not by accident, and not because of any single bad actor. It is a design feature of the global monetary system. Consider that when money is lent into existence at interest, the interest owed doesn't yet exist, since it was never created. The only way to find it is to issue still more debt and more riba. The supply has to keep expanding, forever, or the whole structure caves in on itself in a wave of defaults.

This is why this system can never allow prices to fall for an extended period of time. Falling prices (which should be the natural result of us getting better and more productive at making things) would trigger the collapse of a system that is built on layers of debt. Think about what falling prices (known as deflation) would do to that debt: every loan is a promise to repay a greater sum in the future, so if money were gaining value, that promise would grow heavier every year, until borrowers everywhere — but mainly governments, the most reckless borrowers of all — buckled under debts that only got harder to carry. Inflation basically does the reverse. It quietly shrinks the real cost of what is owed, so yesterday's debt is always a little easier to repay tomorrow. At least, for those who borrow on the right terms, which, as we will shortly see, is not you and me.

The system does not inflate by mistake. It inflates because the mountain of debt it sits on can only remain standing if the money underneath it is forever losing value. So it must inflate, forever. And it is that endless rise in prices that drags the ordinary things, like a home, or a car, or an education, etc., onto borrowed money, because fewer and fewer of us can reach them by saving alone. Rising prices are not a fault in the machine; they are the exhaust fumes of the riba fuel it runs on.

So, to recap what we've established: money that comes into existence as debt forces prices to rise, endlessly, and pushes every part of ordinary life onto borrowed money. Once you understand these mechanics, you can also begin to understand who is punished and who is rewarded by such a system.

If money loses value every year, then holding or saving in it is a slow loss, whilst owing it is a hidden gain. The person who is able to leverage up and take on debt benefits from the value of that debt eroding over time, whilst the things they purchase or investments they make with the borrowed funds hold or increase their worth in real terms. So the rational move, even for someone who needs not... is to borrow. Debt stops being a last resort and becomes the go-to strategy. Saving becomes a mug's game where you have to earn your money twice, once to make it and again to outrun its debasement.

And it turns out that the ones best placed to play this game are those who already own the most, or the ones with assets to pledge as collateral. They borrow at the cheapest rates, turn that borrowed money into hard assets, or lend it back out to those with less at higher rates, capturing the spread between the two. And this is the part that must not be misunderstood: this advantage exists for those who can borrow below the true rate at which the money is being debased. Governments can, at rates they themselves have a hand in setting. The largest corporations can. You cannot. The rate you are charged on a mortgage, a car loan or a credit card is set deliberately above expected inflation, because that is precisely how the lender secures himself a real return. So you carry the debasement and a premium on top of it, while your wages trail behind the prices in the shops. Do not mistake this for a system that forgives your debts. It forgives theirs, and it bills you for the privilege. New money reaches the asset-rich first and the rest of us last, so the gap widens with every turn of the cycle.

And it doesn't stop with individuals; it reshapes every business too. Companies stop competing on who serves the customer best and start competing on who can borrow cheapest, and then on who can turn their own customers into borrowers. Look around the British high street: your supermarket runs a bank, your department store issues its own credit card, and even the company that fixes your car by the roadside will happily offer you a loan. Layer upon layer, the whole economy turns into a game of riba, lending and skimming the difference. Before it collapsed, the American department store Macy's was earning more from the interest on its store cards than from selling the clothes on its shelves. That is what an economy becomes once riba digs its claws into the foundations: at every level, everyone is conscripted into it, whether they chose it or not.

I hope by now that it's becoming clear why this matters to us. Interest is no longer something a careful Muslim can stay clear of at the edges. It has been built into the base of the money, and from the base it seeps into everything priced in that money, which is everything. Understand that interest is not some sin waiting at the door of the bank. It is the air which we breathe. That is what it means to say the riba is in the money itself.

Now let's look deeper into the effects of all of this, and why it lands on Muslims in a way it lands on no one else. Not because we are the only ones trapped inside this system; everyone is. But most of the world is content inside it. It is comfortable with debt, with interest, with living for the now. We are not, and we cannot be, because so much of it runs directly against what we believe and are striving to be. The system doesn't merely make us poorer. It quietly dismantles the institutions our deen commands us to uphold. And here, perhaps, you begin to feel why riba is condemned so severely in Islam, and why it is the one sin over which Allah (swt) and His Messenger (pbuh) declare war. Look at what it does once we stop rejecting it as we were commanded. It does not stay a single transaction at the edge. It seeps into everything, and rots the structures our Ummah was built upon.

Islam asks us to live with our eyes on what lasts. To weigh the akhirah above the fleeting life, to defer, to sacrifice now for later, to build for those who come after us. The students of economics have a plainer name for that same disposition: low time preference, the willingness to forego something today (be it a satisfaction, pleasure, or consumption) for something greater tomorrow. As Muslims, this is the compass we are taught to follow in all our pursuits. It is the DNA of the institutions we were commanded to uphold. And this is precisely what a debasing money destroys.

When your savings melt in your hand as you desperately try to maintain your grip, the rational response is to grab what you can now. Spend before prices climb more, consume today with little regard for tomorrow, focus on your own survival with no thought for others, and constantly discount a future you can no longer rely on. A whole society tilted that way stops building things to last. In the worst cases it is stark: people in collapsing currencies chop down fruit-bearing trees for firewood, eating the seed corn of their own future. In the west, it's subtler: a grand old library built to stand for centuries, replaced by a modern eyesore that needs rebuilding in forty years. But for us, wherever we are, it manifests itself in the erosion of institutions that our Ummah upheld for centuries.

Let's start with the one we all know first-hand: the family. It is easy to treat family as something private, sitting outside economics, but in Islam it is one of the load-bearing institutions of the entire social order. It sits among the five things the Sharia exists to protect: faith, life, intellect, family and wealth. And the Quran built an economic structure around it, with the husband charged as provider, inheritance carefully apportioned to widow and children, and the near relative and the orphan given the first claim on our wealth. Where the modern state established welfare offices, Islam reached for the family. Care for your parents in their old age, raise your own children, and provide for your kin. It was more than just a household, it was also a system of welfare, wealth distribution and charity, all at once.

Now a look at what a debasing money does to that precious institution. When a single income can no longer outrun prices that never stop climbing, both parents are forced into full-time work simply to tread water, children raised by a morally devoid state rather than by their own mother and father, the patient generational work of a household sacrificed to the daily scramble. And the care of parents in old age — a duty Allah (swt) placed directly upon us, not upon any institution — becomes something a household running two full-time jobs can barely find the hours to give. Our communities have carried this better, and for longer, than most around us. But the squeeze does not relent, and eventually it becomes unsustainable even for us[5]. Into every void created in the household, the state steps, its influence growing as the family's shrinks.

And what is handed over in that exchange is not simply a chore. It is an act of worship: the reward attached to raising your own children, to honouring your parents, to providing for your kin, all surrendered for a service delivered by a bureaucracy, in place of a duty that was always meant to be carried by the family and the community around it. This is not culture simply drifting, or a people mysteriously losing their values; it is the Islamic family being made, quite literally, monetarily impossible. The system doesn't just take our money. It pulls us, by the pocket, toward the exact disposition we were commanded to resist. And it dissolves, one household at a time, the first building block of a prospering Ummah.

Then there is the Waqf. Its absence in our vocabulary alone should tell us just how much we have actually lost. For most of our history, the Muslim world ran its welfare through these endowment structures: a person would dedicate land or wealth, in perpetuity, to serve the community. The Ottoman Awqaf were so complete that a person could be born in a Waqf-funded hospital, sleep in a Waqf-funded cradle, be taught in a Waqf-funded school, drink from Waqf-funded fountains, and finally be buried at the Waqf's expense, cradle to grave, with no state and no taxation behind any of it. But the whole model rests on one thing, which is sound money. The entire function of a Waqf is to take the stored fruits of one person's life and let them serve strangers for centuries. And you cannot store value for centuries in a money engineered to leak. Only with honest money can you create something of real value once and store its economic powers until they are needed. That is the premise of the Waqf, and it is the premise that a debasing money makes impossible.

The same rot reaches our giving. Zakat is meant to move real wealth to those in need; but on broken money, it decays on the way to them and continues decaying in their hands. The damage runs both ways: as inflation eats the giver's wealth, he has less to give in real terms, and more of what remains must go to his own rising costs, while whatever he does give keeps losing value in the hands that receive it. The lifespan of charity is squeezed at both ends. On honest money the reverse holds: savings grow, so more can be given, and what is given keeps its worth, so it genuinely alleviates conditions over time. But the damage isn't only in the numbers. When a family is running flat out just to stay afloat, generosity itself stops coming to mind. The obligatory zakat is paid, if it can be, but the voluntary giving of Sadaqah that our deen prizes so highly is the first thing to fall away. Voluntary generosity is the first casualty of a survival economy. A people held in permanent anxiety about their own provision cannot be the open-handed Ummah we were meant to be.

And it doesn't stop there. It reaches how we are meant to do business too. Islam's economic model is one of partnership where investor and trader share the profit and the loss, the way the Sahaba would fund a trading caravan and split what it earned on its return. A financier who shares your risk actually cares whether you succeed; a lender who only wants his interest cares only that he can repossess if you fail. A debt-based economy turns a society of partners into a society of creditors and debtors. Predators and prey. And even Qard Hassan — the simple, beautiful interest-free loan that Allah (swt) encourages us to give — cannot thrive in this system. A loan repaid in full always comes back worth less than when it left, and generosity itself ends up penalised.

It is clear, from following the trail so far and observing the impact on our institutions, that today's riba-based monetary system is incompatible with Islam at every level.

None of this would have surprised the early Muslims. They built the alternative, showed us the model, and ran it for centuries. And it was never merely a prohibition on riba; it was a complete code for how to trade: full measure, clear contracts, honest dealing, free markets and property respected. The model worked so well that merchants of every faith came to trade in Muslim markets, and it quickly spread across continents, all the way to the furthest western corners of the world. All of it rests on the principle of justice in exchange. And nothing decides justice in exchange more than the honesty of the very thing you exchange in. Give full measure when you measure, and weigh with a balance that is straight (Al-Isra, 17:35). Woe to those who short the scales (Al-Mutaffifin, 83:1–6). Honesty in weights and measures, which is nothing other than honesty in money, is a matter our deen returns to again and again.

The market of Madinah was tax-free, and the Prophet (pbuh), when asked to fix prices, refused, holding that it is Allah who sets prices[3], and leaving them to the honest workings of trade. This was more than a thousand years before Europeans, and Adam Smith[4], even considered such an idea. The gold dinar gave the Muslim world a single sound currency from Spain to Central Asia; capital formed, trade networks deepened, and civilisation compounded on top of a money that held its value and enabled orientation toward the future. The prohibition of riba didn't leave a void, or prevent economic growth, but rather it forced the invention of something better: the profit-and-loss partnership, the Qirad and the Mudaraba, the world's first true venture finance, later borrowed by the Venetian commenda that would seed European banking. This is the thread that runs through the whole golden age: for the better part of a millennium, from the Prophet's (pbuh) Madinah through the Umayyads and the Abbasids, the Muslim world traded, saved, built and gave on money that held its worth. The flourishing and the sound money were not two facts sitting side by side; one rested on the other. Sound, honest money was the soil upon which everything else grew.

And by observing the developments that followed, we can see this is more than just a casual relation. When the soundness of the money went, so did it all. The Ottomans prospered on a sound money standard for centuries; but once they began debasing the silver in the late sixteenth century to pay for their wars, prices roughly quintupled and the unrest followed close behind. By the nineteenth century they were borrowing at interest from European banks; in 1881 they defaulted, and European powers took control of their revenues. The Caliphate was hollowed out by riba and inflation long before it was ever beaten on a battlefield. And the Waqf fell in step with the coin. The same state that had turned to borrowing at interest and debasing its money, now in desperate need of new ways to fund their deficits and centralise control, took aim at the endowments: taxing their surpluses, narrowing who they were allowed to serve, and folding their independent boards into itself. This is the inevitable outcome of a society that goes astray. The Waqf, which fed and taught and healed without a ruler's permission, had become both a source of revenue to seize and a rival to be removed.

What the late Ottoman state began from within, the colonial powers amplified outward, and for much the same reason. A Waqf is economic sovereignty made concrete. To any power that governs through its grip on money and wealth — whether a state straining to extract every last source of revenue, or an empire imposing control over a conquered people — that kind of independence is a threat to be removed. So wherever the Waqf stood, it was dismantled. Where more than half the land of nineteenth-century India was held in endowment, the British passed an act in 1861 to seize the boards and turn their revenues toward military spending; the French outlawed family endowments in Algeria outright. Institutions that could feed, teach and heal a community without a state were competition for the state. So they had to go. This incompatibility is not something new.

The pattern is impossible to miss. Sound money underwrote the flourishing of our civilisation for centuries; the moment it was abandoned, everything built on top of it began to crumble, first the coin, then the Waqf, then the entire order that depended on both. This is only one thread of the story, but the evidence sits everywhere you care to look, then and now. Our Ummah and its institutions simply cannot function as they were meant to on rotten foundations.

And so we arrive at where we stand today. Our households are squeezed by a system that bills us for its own survival. The family strains under a pressure it was never built to carry. The Waqf, which once fed and taught and healed millions, survives mostly as a word that few of us would even recognise. Our giving is worth less by the year, at both ends of it. The businesses we build are financed by the exact thing we were told to flee. And a people who once invented equity finance now queue for imitations of the thing we abandoned.

Look at what passes for "Islamic finance" now. A "halal" mortgage, a commodity Murabaha, that rearranges the paperwork but leaves you paying what is, to the penny, interest by another name; a Sukuk sold as a bond-that-isn't, yet priced off the same interest rate it claims to have escaped. None of it is quite what it says it is, and it cannot be. A genuine interest-free loan, a real profit-and-loss partnership, a self-sustaining Waqf cannot be built on money designed to rot. You cannot lay a clean floor on a swamp. So we get the workaround, the wrapper, the Islamic label glued onto the very same fiat engine, pumping its riba emissions into the air we all breathe. The retrofitting is the evidence of everything we have lost.

For anyone who has reached this far, here's what I want you to understand: the same mechanism draining and exploiting us today is the same one that brought down our civilisations then. Not a different story. The same story, continuing. And the solution today is as it was then. We must go back to what was abandoned.

So why do a growing number of Muslims believe that Bitcoin is the tool which enables us to do that? Not because of a price, and not because it's cool technology. Because when you hold it up against everything we have just walked through, it answers each piece in turn. Its supply is fixed. Twenty-one million, and no bank, no government, no committee can dilute it at your expense. That is honest weights and measures made into a protocol: the Quran's command against tampering with the scale, Al-Mutaffifin, expressed as a money that cannot be tampered with. Because it holds its value, saving becomes rational again, the Waqf's premise becomes possible again, Zakat can reach the poor with its worth intact, and Qard Hassan stops being a penalty on the generous. And because it is not born as debt, there is no riba at its foundation, nothing lent into existence, no interest owed on the very first unit. It doesn't ask you to be more careful inside a broken system. It is a new system, built on honest, just foundations.

As I mentioned at the start, that natural instinct to be suspicious is the right one; it has simply been aimed at the wrong target. Everything in the "crypto" space has somebody behind it: a founder who can issue more, a foundation that can rewrite the rules, insiders who got there first and need you to buy in. That is what you are right to reject, I reject it too. Bitcoin has none of it. There is nobody to trust because there is nobody in charge, and that, not its price, is the entire point of it. Bitcoin is sound money. The rest are neither sound, nor money.

And whilst I'm sure it's already quite obvious, I feel I must still say it... I'm not a scholar. I'm a Muslim who learned about Bitcoin, looked at it through the lens of my deen, and couldn't unsee the connection. I'm not asking you to take my word for any of this. That would be the worst possible reason to believe something this important. I'm asking you to do the thing we've largely stopped doing: look for yourself. Ask the hard questions. Bring your objections — the sharper, the better. This is far too important to outsource to a thirty-second soundbite, whether it comes from me or from anyone else.

That is what the Muslim Bitcoin Summit is for.

And it is the real answer to the question you began with. Not because we need a separate room to talk about money, but because the questions that matter most to us are not the ones any other room is built to ask. There are Bitcoin conferences all over the world, and not one of them exists to examine riba at the base of the money, or what became of the Waqf, or whether Zakat can reach the poor with its value intact, or what our own history proves about a civilisation that let go of honest weights and measures. Those questions belong to us. Nobody else is going to ask them on our behalf.

So we are going to ask them properly, over two days in central London on 10–11 October 2026, alongside scholars, people who have spent years studying this, those who worked inside the Islamic finance industry and walked away from it, and Muslims already building the alternative. It is open to everyone: scholar and student, business owner and parent, the curious and the unconvinced alike. Come with your questions. Come to disagree, if that's where you stand.

You don't have to be convinced of anything yet. You only have to be willing to look.

https://mslmbtcsummit.com/

References

[1] Bank of England (2014), Money creation in the modern economy, Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q1.

[2] Deutsche Bundesbank (2017), The role of banks, non-banks and the central bank in the money creation process, Monthly Report, April 2017.

[3] Sunan Abī Dāwūd 3451 (also Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī 1314; Sunan Ibn Mājah 2200) — the Prophet (pbuh) declining to fix prices in Madinah.

[4] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).

[5] Muslim Council of Britain, report into elderly and end-of-life care ( https://mcb.org.uk/mcb-report-into-elderly-and-end-of-life-care-launched-at-city-hall/); see also written evidence submitted to the UK Parliament on adult social care in Muslim communities, and The Islamic Movement Trust ( https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/126189/pdf/).

A great chat with the brothers #nevent1q…4yau

2026-07-11T14:37:07+02:00

A great chat with the brothers

quoting
nevent1q…4yau
A fire interview with The Muslim Bitcoiner and the Muslim Guide is now live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AEL7GGLWgs

Muslims in today’s world cannot escape the dust of Riba. Its ...

2026-07-03T18:06:25+02:00

Muslims in today’s world cannot escape the dust of Riba. Its cloud reaches far and wide. It finds its way into every corner of our daily lives, because it is in the money - and money, is one half of every transaction.

There is however, a solution to this. Unfortunately, many of us choose to disregard it, for one reason or another. Fundamentally though, it tends to come down to this: most don't truly understand the deep-rooted nature of the problem - and even amongst those who do - most refuse to make an independent assessment of the solution.

I’m not going to dilute this message, or try to dress up what it requires of us, in an attempt to make it easier for Muslims to digest…

The solution is adopting sound money, in the form of Bitcoin.

And that does not mean holding Bitcoin as an investment to sell for profit, investing in Bitcoin treasury companies, or buying Bitcoin ETFs. This is all an extension of the same control system that seeks to prevent us from breaking free.

It means adopting Bitcoin as a new monetary standard, harnessing the power of self custody, and transacting with fellow Muslims, around the world, without censorship.

None of this is to say that Bitcoin is some kind of mystical force which, through its mere existence, promises to rid us of Riba and all other forms of evil and oppression. That would be dishonest and untrue. The reality is much less convenient. It requires us to actually do something, to intimate change, to forego many things we have grown attached to. it requires real sacrifice.

Bitcoin is merely a tool. It is not inherently good or evil. It is not going to miraculously save us. We either choose to use this tool, as an Ummah, to built a new system, on new foundations, aligned with our beliefs and principles - or we continue to ignore it, and remain trapped in a system rooted in corruption and extraction, with Riba flowing through its veins.

Even what I’ve said so far may sound easier than it is, so let me be clear: We are talking about moving our time and energy to an alternative monetary system.

That means rebuilding our institutions on new, decentralised, sovereign rails, and enduring the periods of uncertainty that arise. It means suffering volatility in its pure form; volatility that decades of monetary manipulation has conditioned you into fearing. It means withstanding the inevitable attacks that will be launched to try and prevent such a migration.

It is not an easy task. A real solution requires us forgoing many conveniences and comforts. It is a financial and digital Hijrah - But staying within the existing system, built on Riba at its core, is no longer an option.

When the Prohet ﷺ and his companions left everything behind and journeyed to Medina, they faced great uncertainty, many hardships, and endless difficulties. They did not wait until the path was certain. They did not have a destination of comfort and convenience prepared for them. They had to strive to build a new system, in a new place, where new institutions could be fostered. This is what is required.

It is required now, like it was then, because the incumbent system is hostile toward everything our faith encourages. It will not allow our institutions to flourish in the way they were intended. It will not allow us to adhere to our principles, or conduct our financial and economic affairs in accordance with our Dīn. It will not allow us to be a sovereign Ummah.

It is time for us to start making our financial and digital Hijrah.

This October in London, we bring together scholars, Islamic finance experts, and Muslims dedicated to the issue, for the UK’s first
@muslimbtcsummit
.

This is not a crypto event. It is not about price, short term financial gain, or any kind of investment talk. It is about building an alternative system, aligned with our values.

You may be skeptical. You may disagree. You may have serious questions and challenges. This is good. This is the place to discuss all of it.

Grab your early bird tickets now, and be part of the discussion: https://mslmbtcsummit.com

10-11 Oct | London, UK

"A time will surely come upon people in which none will ...

2026-06-29T18:29:08+02:00

"A time will surely come upon people in which none will remain but that he consumes Riba. If he does not consume it, he will be afflicted by its dust."
— Sunan Abī Dāwūd 3331

We are living in this time. Right now.

You can spend your whole life trying to keep your money clean, refusing the loans, the credit cards, the interest-bearing accounts, and still never escape it. The dust settles on you anyway. It is in the price of your food, the rent you pay, the wage you earn, the savings you hold. Whether you choose it or not, you are touching Riba every single day.

To see why, look at where our money actually comes from. Nearly every pound and dollar begins life as a loan. When a bank extends credit, new money is created out of nothing. But the bank only ever creates the principal, never the interest owed on top of it. That extra is simply expected to appear from somewhere.

Now think about the cycle that creates. If money is created as debt, and that debt carries interest, the system can never stand still. There is always more owed than there is money to repay it, so more has to be borrowed into existence just to service what already exists. The machine has to keep running. This is why the money supply only ever grows, in every country, decade after decade. It isn't a policy anyone could simply reverse. It is the nature of money that is born as debt.

And every time that supply grows, the money in your pocket is worth a little less. That is all inflation is: not prices mysteriously rising, but your money being quietly diluted to keep a debt-based system from seizing up. You are paying, slowly and invisibly, to hold a currency that has to be debased to survive.

It is tempting to dismiss all this as abstract economics, but it is a matter of faith. Once money is guaranteed to lose value over time, our ability to hold to our principles quietly erodes. Take Qard Hasan, the interest-free loan Islam so strongly encourages. Lend a brother £100, expecting nothing back but the £100. A year later he repays it in full, yet it now buys you less than the day you handed it over. Your generosity has cost you, in real terms. The only way to break even would be to charge a surplus on top. To charge Riba. You would refuse, of course; but that same penalty on generosity is what restricts the collective ability to lend Qard Hasan, and pushes people towards interest-bearing loans instead.

At the scale of a whole economy, with varying cultures and beliefs, you cannot rely on faith as a means of prevention. Every lender who simply wants to break even is pushed to charge interest, and they will. Not out of greed, but out of self-preservation. The system doesn't just permit Riba; it makes Riba the rational choice.

Put it together and the cycle comes into focus. Riba isn't sitting in one place, waiting for you to be disciplined enough to step around it. It is there at the source, in the way every pound is born owing interest that was never created. From there, inflation drives that same Riba downstream, amplifying it at every step, until it has seeped into every transaction and every price you pay. It is there at the top, and multiplied all the way to the bottom. That is why you can't escape it. Not for any failing of yours, but because it is built into the money itself.

None of this lets us off the hook, though. That the system is rigged against us explains the difficulty; it does not excuse us from finding a way out. For most of our lifetimes there genuinely was no feasible alternative, so "this is just how the world works" held some weight. That simply isn't true anymore.

I, along with many others, firmly believe the way out is Bitcoin. Not another Islamic finance product with an Arabic label stitched onto the same broken system, but a different foundation entirely. A money that was never born of debt, that no bank issues as a loan, that no authority can print, debase, or inflate away. Its supply is fixed, so holding it costs you nothing, and lending it freely no longer needs to come at a loss.

The fight against Riba is about more than willpower, and it is never going to be won through one careful personal decision at a time. It starts further back than that. It starts with the money itself. With opting out of a system built on Riba, and into one that isn't.

But this isn't a fight any of us wins alone. It needs Muslims willing to look the system squarely in the eye and work out, together, what comes next. That is the conversation the Muslim Bitcoin Summit exists to have, and this October it comes to the UK for the first time. If what you've read here unsettles you, that instinct is worth following. Even if you have your doubts. Even if you're not convinced. Even if your instinct is to reject the solution we're proposing. Come and ask the hard questions. This is how we start to build the way out.

https://mslmbtcsummit.com/
Oct 10-11 | London, UK

The riba is in the money. The riba is in the money. The riba is ...

2026-06-28T12:20:40+02:00

The riba is in the money.
The riba is in the money.
The riba is in the money.

Muslims need a new money.

Muslim Bitcoin Summit | London | Oct 10-11

mslmbtcsummit.com

#MBSLondon2026

Can’t wait to hear this talk 🔥 #nevent1q…02tk

2026-06-23T09:01:27+02:00

Can’t wait to hear this talk 🔥

quoting
nevent1q…02tk
Featured Speaker Highlight — Safdar Alam Safdar Alam (nprofile…d8zn)

Muslim Bitcoin Summit 2026 — London, Oct 10–11

Safdar Alam has spent two decades at the sharp end of global finance — structuring billions in Islamic financial products at JPMorgan, UBS, and Crédit Agricole — before becoming one of the most important critical voices in the field.

At MBS26 London, Safdar will deliver a talk that cuts to the core of Islamic economic design:

Constraint Generates Alpha:
From Sound Money to Sovereign Architecture

Bitcoin teaches a civilisational lesson:
constraints shape incentives, and incentives shape outcomes.
Fix the money, and you don’t just fix prices — you fix behaviour, structure, and power.

Safdar will explore the next frontier:
If Bitcoin solves the monetary problem, what comes next?

His session examines how the same principles of constraint apply to:
- capital allocation
- financial architecture
- sovereignty and institutional design
- Islamic economic ethics as a blueprint for non‑convergent systems

Safdar argues that Islamic principles — real economy linkage, prohibition of ribā, risk‑sharing, transparency, constraint — are not historical artefacts. They are design primitives for building systems that produce different outcomes from today’s debt‑driven, centralised, inflation‑dependent architecture.

This is not a talk about products.
It’s a talk about first principles, incentives, and the architecture of a sovereign future.

🔗 Safdar’s work: safdaralam.co.uk
🔗 X: @SafdarAlam
🔗 Summit: mslmbtcsummit.com Muslim Bitcoin Summit (nprofile…dat8)

My new Nostr client of choice #nevent1q…50jt

2026-06-20T20:17:10+02:00

My new Nostr client of choice

quoting
nevent1q…50jt
It's finally here. After nine and a half months of hard work, a full restart after the 1st month, and coming close to quitting 3 different times, the 1.0 version of one of the most sovereign Nostr clients is out.

It's available on Linux, Mac, the web, and GrapheneOS. It might even run on Android if you're lucky. You can grab it from Zapstore or get the APK file directly, but it'll never be on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. No Google services at all, not even a quick look. MIT license, over 160 features, including a bunch you've never seen anywhere else and probably couldn't have imagined.

No funding, no investors, no team, no company. Well, just my one-man company. No outside influence, but a ton of user requests built in.

10 months ago I said I should build a client. I wanted to see if I could do it. Now it's done.

Ladies and gentlemen, here it is, all grown up and ready for you: NoorNote 1.0!

The Muslim Bitcoin Summit is happening in London on 10–11 ...

2026-06-19T19:18:26+02:00

The Muslim Bitcoin Summit is happening in London on 10–11 October 2026.

This isn’t just another Bitcoin event. It’s the first dedicated gathering where scholars, builders, and the Ummah come together to seriously discuss Bitcoin as a tool against ribā and for economic sovereignty.

General Bitcoin conferences don’t have the space or the lens to address our specific challenges — inflation, unstable currencies, and the ethical questions around money that matter to us as Muslims.

If you’ve been waiting for a serious conversation at the intersection of Islam and Bitcoin, this is it. Early Bird tickets live now: https://mslmbtcsummit.com
#MBS26London #IslamicFinance #Bitcoin

A short piece addressing the tiredest and laziest claim brought ...

2026-05-27T09:15:10+02:00

A short piece addressing the tiredest and laziest claim brought against Bitcoin

quoting
naddr1qq…v4kl

A common attack launched against Bitcoin is that "you can't use it for anything" or "you can't spend it". You may have heard this on a number of occasions, perhaps you even think it to be true yourself (though if you’re reading this on Nostr, I very much doubt that). If the latter, I invite you to read this short piece; and if the former, I invite you to share it with those you've heard such statements from.

Before explaining why this claim is of little substance, it's important to remind ourselves of a few important things regarding money.

Money serves three purposes, and it must serve them all well, if it is to be a truly good money. Those three things are: - Store of Value - Medium of Exchange - Unit of Account

Fiat money, the paper based (albeit now digital) money we use today, excels at medium of exchange, but fails miserably as a store of value. We do not need to say much more on this, as it is quite evident that £100 today buys you a lot less than it did 10 years ago.

What about unit of account?

Well, at first glance, fiat may seem a good unit of account, simply because everyone uses it as such, but consider the following:

If I am building a house, and needing materials of certain lengths, but the unit of measure for those lengths just keeps changing - it might happen slowly, a small change each day - but as time goes on, 120cm on my tape measure, is no longer the same physical length as it was as the start of the project. The house I end up building will, at best, be wonky; at worst, it collapses entirely.

Now think about that same issue when it comes to an economy and money. if £1,000 today will buy me much less a couple of years down the line, how do I plan, save, strategise, or invest - as an individual or a business - when the measuring stick is changing? Not only is it changing, but the degree to which it will change is totally unknown, and at the mercy of several technicalities that would be outside the understanding of most people. Let's say you're a business owner; you now have to spend time and effort trying to predict what might happen to the measuring stick over the next few years, based on outside factors that you lack a technical understanding of, or what some old grey men in suits might say at a press conference, rather than actually focussing on the core value proposition and end product of your business. We won't go into the countless second and third order effects of this on businesses, consumers and society at large, as there are many, and this is not the time or place. I will simply conclude by saying that, ultimately, an unreliable measuring stick makes economic planning extremely difficult - even outright impossible - and fiat currencies are therefore probably not the best unit of account.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can address the claim brought against Bitcoin. Bitcoin is simply money. By that I mean: it can be used as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account. But when competing monies exist, you may not use a specific money for all three purposes. Now, that might initially sound like an easy cop out, but there is a well-known thing in economics called "Gresham's law", in which "bad money chases out good". But what does that mean? It means that when there are competing monies, and one is of evidently worse quality than the other, people will spend the bad one, and save the good one, using the bad money as soon as possible for their immediate needs, and keeping hold of the good one for the future.

This will make the most sense, to most readers, when you look at Bitcoin from the lens of a developed nation with a relatively well functioning currency, say, as someone in America using the dollar, rather than someone in Nigeria using the Nira. In this scenario, your currency is losing value over time - guaranteed - but not so aggressively that next week you will only be able to by a fraction of what you could today. In this scenario, the problem you face is simply that your currency is a terrible long term store of value. You can't save in it, and you certainly can't plan long term with it, but your currency functions just fine as a medium of exchange day-to-day, with little friction. In fact, with no friction at all compared to bitcoin, which is subject to capital gains taxes whenever you use it. In this scenario, the main property you benefit from in Bitcoin is it's superiority as a store of value. As such, it makes sense that that is what you would primarily use it for, by spending your dollars (the bad money), and saving your Bitcoin (the good money). But does that change the fact that Bitcoin is still a perfectly good medium of exchange?

Let's think about somewhere like Lebanon, where the local currency has experienced multiple rounds of hyper-inflation. It can safely be said that, the local currency is beyond useless as a store of value - and is arguably so as a medium of exchange or unit of account too - but the primary issue is it's inability to serve as a store of value over any useful length of time. People in places like Lebanon typically use their local currency to acquire as many US Dollars as possible, and store those Dollars physically in their homes as a store of value; because whilst the Dollar might lose value gradually over time, it will certainly lose it a lot slower than the local hyper-inflating one. As a Lebanese citizen, you would aim to keep as little of the local currency on hand as possible, enough to cover your immediate expenses, whilst holding everything else in Dollars, and having little intention of spending them. Now, does this mean the US dollar is not a good medium of exchange? Or that it can't function as a medium of exchange, as people in developed nations would like to claim of Bitcoin? No. The dollar is still perfectly valid as a medium of exchange, but for the circumstances faced by those in Lebanon, and other places like it, it serves a more immediate purpose as a store of value... so that is what they will decide to use it for. Spend the bad money, keep hold of the good (or less bad) money. Nothing about the dollar has changed, but the primary concerns facing those using it, mean that it serves a very specific purpose for them right now.

Now, what about places in where the local currency fails to even be a useful medium of exchange? Places where financial repression is rife, or the people find themselves under authoritarian rule? In such places, one cannot even rely on the local currency as a medium of exchange, as it can be confiscated, tracked, frozen, or have access to it blocked off entirely. People in such places cannot access stronger currencies like Dollars or Euros, even if they wanted to. So what do they do? They use Bitcoin. There are archives full of stories just like this from the Human Rights Foundation (hrf.org), which detail how Bitcoin is used as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value, by those who have had their lives decimated by the failures of their local currencies and the oppressive actions of their rulers. It is here where we see Bitcoin shine as a money on all three fronts. It has helped people build circular economies, set up business, escape persecution, and provide a better life for themselves and their families. In the stark absence of all three monetary properties, and in the face of such high friction in the local currency, Bitcoin has no problem stepping up as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value.

From these examples, we can see that the demand for Bitcoin's monetary use cases, as with all forms of money, are dependant of the immediate problems faced by citizens in their financial lives. For those in developed nations, the long-term store of value proposition is most important, for others, there are far greater concerns. To dismiss Bitcoin as money, just because it is not used a medium of exchange where you are right now, is to dismiss the realities of the world. There will come a time when all the inevitable consequences of fiat currencies touch every single one of us, wherever we reside; and when that time comes, skeptics will be grateful that Bitcoin exists to serve as the greatest form of money we've ever seen.

And before I conclude this piece, I would be doing a disservice to the incredible efforts of those in the Bitcoin ecosystem, if I did not point out the ways in which Bitcoin is already growing as a medium of exchange, in even developed nations today. Jack Dorsey's Block has now enabled Bitcoin lightning payment functionality on all Square payment terminal devices, used by 4 million small and medium sized business across America. Steak 'N Shake have been accepting Bitcoin payments at all their US locations since May 2025, experiencing a 50% reduction in payment processing fees, and attributing their 11% Q2 and 15% Q3 sales increases from last year to their Bitcoin integration. Every day there are new milestones being reached with layer-2 scaling solutions for Bitcoin, making it easier and more convenient for people to spend Bitcoin day-to-day. I wasn't old enough to see the similar breakthroughs that were no doubt occurring behind the scenes during the rise of the internet, but I imagine it felt a little something like this; it's truly something to behold. Whilst long-term store of value might be the most pressing concern of those of us in developed nations, the economic incentives, for both merchants and customers, associated with using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, is slowly turning the tide. Gradually, then suddenly.

So when you next hear someone say that "Bitcoin can't be used for anything", or that "you can't buy anything with it"; you can refer them to the examples above. Furnish them with the reports from the Human Right Foundation. Take them to a store that now accepts Bitcoin via their square terminal. Take them to a Steak 'N Shake store. Show them btcmap.organd let them pick a local store from here to visit. Set them up with a Bitcoin lightning wallet, and show them how easy it is to pay. If you're really feeling generous, plan a trip to one of the several countries where Bitcoin is now widely accepted by most stores, or where circular economies have been built around Bitcoin as their medium of exchange. Let them see for themselves just what Bitcoin can do, and is already doing, for millions around the globe.

Something that hit me early on in my journey as a Muslim, and ...

2026-05-24T22:38:23+02:00

Something that hit me early on in my journey as a Muslim, and some questions that more Muslims need to start seriously asking

quoting
naddr1qq…9xth

When I became Muslim, the thing that made me realise just how incompatible the modern fiat monetary system is with Islam, was the concept of Qard Hasan. What started as a single uncomfortable realisation ended up being something far more useful. Once I understood Qard Hasan, and what it exposed about the money we all use, I also had the clearest possible test for assessing Bitcoin from an Islamic perspective.

Qard Hasan is the Islamic practice of lending interest-free to those in need, an act which is greatly encouraged in Islam and foundational to the way we should operate as a society. It beautifully summarises the way in which we should conduct ourselves when it comes to our finances, wealth and generosity.

“Who is he that will give Allah Qard Hasan? For Allah will increase it manifold to his credit.” (Qur’an 57:11)

“If you give Allah Qard Hasan … he will grant you forgiveness.” (Qur’an 64:17)

“Establish regular prayer and give regular charity and give Allah Qard Hasan.” (Qur’an 73:20)

Yet, when you try to apply this concept in the modern world, you find that everything around us is in direct opposition to it. Not only does an inflationary monetary system structurally discourage such behaviour, it actively punishes it. In a fiat system, there is a financial penalty for generosity. A financial penalty for conducting your affairs in accordance with Allah's will.

Now that penalty alone shouldn't be enough to discourage Muslims from giving Qard Hasan. Many of the things that are most pleasing to Allah require us to endure some kind of hardship and sacrifice in the process. If a borrower in a Qard Hasan arrangement can’t repay in full, you’re encouraged to extend the loan or forgive some of the debt; an act which itself serves as a further display of generosity, and would amount to little more than a financial inconvenience to the lender, when dealing with sound money that increases your purchasing power over time. But the money today - fiat money - is so broken, and the system so exploitative, that the hardship and sacrifice required for a believer to provide for his or her immediate needs, and the needs of their families, whilst avoiding major sin in the process, leaves very little left over for such considerations.

For me, it served as the clearest and most vivid illustration of how the monetary system of today is incompatible with the teachings of Islam. It’s a simple and powerful contrast. One side encourages you to lend to those who need it and receive back what you lent, sacrificing only the facility of obtaining additional enjoyment for a temporary period of time. The other side not only discourages this simple act, it encourages anyone who does lend to engage in the major sin of Riba, or otherwise risk being unable to provide for themselves and their own families, as they watch the price of everything rise, whilst their wealth erodes… Act too generously, and you may find yourself being the next person in your community requiring a Qard Hasan loan.

Muslims really need to understand this and start taking it more seriously. Qard Hasan is just one of many Islamic principles that simply cannot be practiced as intended, at the scale it should be, within today’s monetary system. When asking yourself the question of whether a particular monetary instrument is Halal or Haram, you have to take a look at how it aligns with these core Islamic principles. Does it enable them? Does it encourage them? Or does it punish those who try to fulfil them? Does its very nature oppose everything that we know is right? This is the simple litmus test.

It's this test that must be applied to Bitcoin when assessing its credibility as an alternative solution. For me, it was a simple assessment. Look at Bitcoin through the exact same lens, and you see something fundamentally different. It is not a tolerable alternative form of money, but the polar opposite of fiat.

Bitcoin is sound money. Its supply is fixed; no one can debase it, no one can print more of it, no one can dilute the holders to fund the reckless spending habits of those in power. Against a money like this, prices fall over time as technology and productivity push the cost of goods and services down, exactly as they should, and the purchasing power of the saver is preserved, if not grown. The lender extending a Qard Hasan loan is no longer punished for his generosity. He gets back the principal he lent, with its purchasing power intact, and the act costs him only what it was ever meant to cost: the use of his wealth, for a period of time. In the absence of the guaranteed erosion of purchasing power, you can see how generosity would be incentivised even further in the case of the borrower struggling to repay the principal in full. There is no loss in real terms to the lender if they choose to forgive a percentage of the loan in such a situation - even a 90-95% repayment of the original amount would leave them financially intact, and their ability to provide for their immediate needs, and the needs of their family, has not been decimated by a bout of printing-induced inflation.

Bitcoin passes this test. And what holds for Qard Hasan holds for the Waqf, for Sadaqah at scale, and all the other ways in which we are expected to devote our economic energy. An Ummah on a Bitcoin standard is an Ummah that is better able to uphold our obligations and conduct our affairs in accordance with the teachings of Islam.

Burying our heads in the sand and telling ourselves that this is "just the way things are", that "we don't have any other choice", or that "the system is designed this way and we can't change it", is frankly no longer an acceptable stance to take. There is now an alternative available to us, and every single Muslim has a responsibility to assess the options available against the teachings of our religion, and ask themselves the hard question:

Am I doing everything in my power to conduct my affairs in accordance with the will of Allah SWT? Or am I succumbing to a system that destroys the values I'm responsible for upholding?

And if the answer is the latter... why am I doing this?

Is it because I don't want to face the inconveniences and hardships that may have to be endured in rejecting a system which, at its face, feels so cosy and convenient? Is it because I don't want to face a situation in which I have to admit that I am now choosing to engage in something I know is wrong? Is it because facing this reality would mean taking responsibility for making significant changes to something I'm so accustomed to?

Or, is it just because I don't want to have to think about these things? Is it because I would rather offload my decision-making onto someone else, instead of taking the time and responsibility to make my own informed assessment of such important matters? Is it because I watched an uninformed soundbite of a sheikh telling me Bitcoin is haram, and that helps me sleep better at night?

The reality is, there is now a choice, because there is now an alternative; which means that refusal to explore it, is choosing to ignore it.

There will come a day when every single one of us will be asked about our choices. What did we do once we were aware of how this system worked? Did we do our best to take the action needed? Is your choice one that you will be willing to stand by then? Whatever answer you give now, picture offering it then. Picture standing in front of Allah SWT and saying it out loud.

If you can't, you already have your answer.

And without boycotting the money itself

2026-05-23T09:56:35+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…4xrr
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And without boycotting the money itself

Looking forward to many more discussion like it 🤲🏽

2026-05-22T18:57:25+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…9mp0
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Looking forward to many more discussion like it 🤲🏽

Yeah, let’s connect and discuss, very interested

2026-05-21T16:32:27+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…6hug
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Yeah, let’s connect and discuss, very interested

I’m here for this, would be a great opportunity for me to learn ...

2026-05-15T21:14:16+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…qtey
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I’m here for this, would be a great opportunity for me to learn more in the process too

For me, Broken Money by @nprofile…ktc5 changed the way I looked ...

2025-11-21T19:15:40+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…xanv
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For me, Broken Money by LynAlden (nprofile…ktc5) changed the way I looked at money. That book was my gateway drug

There is no way he can honestly believe that when he’s seen ...

2025-11-21T19:10:11+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…a7g5
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There is no way he can honestly believe that when he’s seen behind the curtain of the debt based ponzi

If by staying humble you mean, staying quiet and taking ...

2025-11-21T19:06:39+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…fdfh
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If by staying humble you mean, staying quiet and taking screenshots of all the bears and doomers, so that I can overwhelm them, once we recover, with levels of pettiness they didn’t think possible; then yes, I’m being super humble 🤣

“Meatspace” 🤣🤣 I love that

2025-11-03T16:37:45+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…hknd
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“Meatspace” 🤣🤣 I love that

One of the biggest things that made me ditch fiat (and my fiat ...

2025-11-03T11:35:01+01:00

One of the biggest things that made me ditch fiat (and my fiat assets) for Bitcoin, was realising the degree to which hyper-financialised arbitrage holds this whole Ponzi scheme up.

Every time I learned more about it, peeled back another layer, I felt even more uneasy and worried about having any connection to it whatsoever.

Nothing productive. Just exploiting gaps in the fiat system for more fiat with extreme leverage.

It’s one big circle jerk. And you can see it more clearly than anywhere when you look at the basis point trade being run out of the Cayman Islands.

Leveraged hedge funds have basically been funding the US deficit to a degree nobody quite imagined. They have been soaking up all the excess supply, to leverage themselves 50:1, and exploit a small arbitrage gap.

It should seriously concerns everyone alive today that this is what the system is built on. The only real demand now for all this continued borrowing doesn’t come from genuine demand, but leveraged arbitrage. That’s what’s funding the U.S. Government.

He has the symptoms identified perfectly, but he is wayyy of on ...

2025-05-23T16:40:52+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…m0fm
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He has the symptoms identified perfectly, but he is wayyy of on diagnosing the causes. If only he’d realise that Bitcoin provides a way to tackle every issue he raises.