The Booming Trend of Crypto in Indonesia

According to Indonesia’s Ministry of Trade data, the number of crypto investors in the country had grown from 4 million people at the end of 2020, to 6.5 million people by the end of May 2021.
It has exceeded the number of investors in the share market, which is around 2.4 million according to Bank Indonesia the central bank.
Putri Madarina, a certified financial planner and founder of Halal Vestor, a Shariah financial planner and education service in Jakarta, said the flourishing interest in crypto investing in Indonesia was partly due to social media, especially TikTok.
“It is even booming during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are actually in the second wave of the crypto trend,” Ms Madarina told the ABC, referring to the crypto boom three years ago.
Ms Madarina has been investing in crypto since 2017 and said the Islamic decree hadn’t deterred her from continuing to invest in crypto.
“What we bought is a digital commodity, like a collection that we consider valuable,” she said.
She also considered crypto as a ‘mal’ an Islamic term for property which can take in many forms.
“So, as a medium of exchange, I think it’s not a problem,” said Ms Madarina, who is also a treasurer of an Islamic fintech association in Indonesia.
“As a property, I don’t see any Islamic ruling being violated, unless it was made to be a means of deception, which is also an external factor that we can’t control.”
Fatwas may change in the future
Cryptocurrency is still being discussed widely among Islamic scholars and institutions around the globe.
In 2018, the Grand Mufti of Egypt banned Bitcoin trading as it was prone to risks for the traders due to the price fluctuations.
Haitham al-Haddad, a British Muslim scholar, also considered cryptocurrencies not halal since it is virtual currency with “no tangible worth”.
Similar views have also been shared by individual Muslim scholars in countries such as Turkey, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia.
But others have taken the opposite view, including South Africa’s Darul Uloom Zakariyya, Pakistan-based Shariah Advisory Muhammad Abu Bakar, and other Muslim scholars in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Ms Madarina said cryptocurrency was such a “hot topic” in the Muslim world.
She added the new Islamic decree would less likely impact the decisions of cryptocurrency investors, and instead be “an eye-opener” for investors or those who are about to enter the market.
(https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-21/cryptocurrency-is-considered-haram-in-indonesia/100630646)