Bitcoins can be acquired by 'mining' them, where a computer generates codes and if they're valid you going that bitcoin. Is this equivalent to Rica/interest?
Is it haram from some other means?
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Bitcoin is illegal I think. You don't pay any tax. So don't involve. – hellzone Apr 03 '14 at 08:45
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@hellzone, what makes you had that. References? – PracticingFerret Apr 03 '14 at 08:49
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Related: http://money.stackexchange.com/q/8138 – PracticingFerret Apr 03 '14 at 08:53
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@hellzone - Legality of BitCoin depends on what country you're talking about. – System Down Apr 03 '14 at 16:52
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Riba can only exist in six things: Gold, silver, barley, wheat, dates and salt. So there's no riba beyond any transaction outside of these. – Sayyid Apr 04 '14 at 02:33
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@sayyid - source? – PracticingFerret Apr 04 '14 at 05:56
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4Abu Sa'id al-Khodri narrated Rasolullah said: "Gold is to be paid for by gold, silver by silver, wheat by wheat, barley by barley, dates by dates, salt by salt, like by like, payment being made hand to hand. He who made an addition to it, or asked for an addition, in fact dealt in Riba. The receiver and the giver are equally guilty." [Sahih Muslim, Book of Mosaaqaat, each narrator testified they heard it] – Sayyid Apr 04 '14 at 10:22
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1@sayyid, that would/could make a good basis for anot answer. It does raise the question if exchanges are not made hand by hand are they O'Quinn halal? – PracticingFerret Apr 04 '14 at 13:27
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@Sayyid - That is an interesting observation. A lot of today's currencies (certainly the US dollar) do not use a gold standard anymore. Many Islamic economists believe that this makes interest on USD not riba. – System Down Apr 04 '14 at 16:54
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This looks relevant: http://islam.stackexchange.com/q/5301/43 – PracticingFerret Apr 04 '14 at 18:17
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There's not much room to type here, so I hope you don't mind me answering in a indirect way on the main page. – Sayyid Apr 04 '14 at 23:39
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@sayyid so long as you let me know where you answered – PracticingFerret Apr 05 '14 at 00:33
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Interesting question!
I don't believe I've ever read of any scholars discuss it, let alone issue any fatwas. So this will be personal conjecture.
But first, let's explore the definition of riba in Islam. There are some differences of opinion, but generally it is defined as "unjustified increase of value for one party during the exchange of commodities of the same type with the other party". So if I give you 30 grams of gold and you give it back as 35 grams then that is riba. Here is a very good article on the Islamic definition of riba.
Now let's look at BitCoin mining. I won't pretend that I understand it completely but here's a brief description: BitCoin is based on distributed book keeping among disparate computer systems to keep records and avoid double spending of the currency. This is called a block chain. If you offer your own computer system to be part of this chain (a very intensive computational task) you get rewarded with BitCoin. This is what is commonly known as BitCoin mining.
In essence you are exchanging your computer resources (hardware, time, electricity ... etc) in exchange for BitCoin. These are two different commodities, so there's no riba here.
System Down
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1I need Fatwa about mining, because I just started mining and invested a lot to build a powerful PC. – MD TAREQ HASSAN Oct 30 '17 at 01:40