Guiding Fiqh Analysis of Crypto Assets: A Proposed Framework

Abstract

The emergence of cryptocurrencies has brought about revolutionary changes in financial transactions, offering speed, cost-efficiency, and enhanced privacy without the involvement of traditional intermediaries. Despite these advantages, crypto assets pose several challenges from a fiqh perspective. Firstly, there are discrepancies among researchers attempting to define them. Secondly, technological complexities have led to misunderstandings of their concept. Thirdly, there is a general misconception about their similarity to Bitcoin. Fourthly, there is a notable dearth of comprehensive fiqh studies on the topic. Therefore, this study has adopted a qualitative method to address these four research gaps in extant literature. It has critically reviewed the literature to identify the issues and propose a definition of crypto assets and has categorized them into six types. Content analysis research method was used to develop a conceptual framework for the fiqh analysis of crypto assets. The framework is expected to equip Muslim researchers and jurists with processes, risk analysis methods, and benchmarks to objectively evaluate a given crypto asset.