Today we talk with Sheikh Mustafa Umar, from California Islamic University, to gain insight into whether Bitcoin is halal or haram as well as discuss investing in bitcoin, fatwas on Bitcoin, bitcoin mining, and more.

But first things first, is Bitcoin halal or haram?

To summarize the words of Sheikh Mustafa Umar, at this time we can say that Bitcoin might be permissible or it might be makruh (disliked), but we definitely cannot say that it is haram.

To learn more about why we cannot say that Bitcoin is haram as well as how Muslims should approach this new technology, please watch the video below or simply read the video transcript of the interview below.

Sheikh Mustafa Umar’s websites to check out
California Islamic University
Video: “Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency” by Sh. Mustafa Umar on January 26, 2018
Mustafa Umar’s Blog
Sheikh Mustafa on Facebook
Twitter: @mustafaumar

Video Transcript

Hacking and Cryptocurrency

Andre Rishi: As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh! And I want to thank everybody out there for joining us for today’s episode here of the Islam and Bitcoin Podcast. Today, we have another special guest with us, Shaykh Mustafa Umar, from Cal Islamic University.

Our Shaykh, comes to us with a very established background, I would say. He does have a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in Islamic Studies as well as a bachelor’s in Information Systems and Computer Science. The brother just loves to study.

He is definitely – he’s also traveled the world and been able to study at the feet of scholars; something that many of us would love to do. And if that’s not enough, if he’s not busy enough, he actually is the author of several books and also the founder and director of California Islamic University. So, I wanted to welcome you Shaykh, to the Islam and Bitcoin Podcast.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Andre Rishi: Hamdullah! Hamdullah! Now, just so the audience knows I actually met you at the Islamic Institute of Orange County back in January of this year. And you gave a wonderful talk on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

So, just so the audience knows, I really believe you have a very solid understanding of cryptocurrency married to Islamic finance. Again, for the audience, I’m actually going to post a link to that talk that you gave in the show notes here of the podcast and I highly encourage everyone to go check it out.

It’s two hours long but that’s Ok, it’s two hours of excellent information, and I definitely highly recommend that people check that out. So, again, I think your background in cryptocurrency and Islamic finance is better than most of what I’ve seen with the scholars out there.

I mean I have been doing this podcast, this website for a while now probably two years, and I have yet to find scholars who can articulate cryptocurrency well in conjunction with Islam. So, I’m curious, how did you even get into studying cryptocurrency?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: [Laughter] So, it’s a long story going back but I mean when I was in high school, I used to – like every other high school kid, I used to be motivated by the movies that I watch. So, one of the movies that really influenced me a lot was a movie called Hackers.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: And it kind of got me into this idea of computer security, network security, and things like that. So, that’s what kind of motivated actually to go and do a degree in computer science.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, I’ve always been into computers and I kind of got a little bit more into the idea of digital security, cybersecurity, those types of things. Call it a little bit of computer hacking but like not the really illegal type.

[Laughter]

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: I just want to throw that out there.

Andre Rishi: Just clarify, clarify a little bit.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: We got to clarify that before I get so much showing up on my door.

Andre Rishi: I know right. I know right.

[Laughter]

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, I was kind of – I’ve been into that and you know ever since I was a kid and that interest never really went away. That’s even while I was abroad studying Islamic Studies and all of that stuff.

I used to come home in the summers and I’d still like open up my books and go on websites and I was really interested in cybersecurity and those types of things. So, that’s why I have been following things like Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, that’s something that kind of started out amongst a group of people who are into that stuff.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: They’re into like new technology, they’re into the idea of you know cryptography. And also, on top of that like when I was studying Islam, I started to understand you know what, you know, what is riba? What is interest in the Islamic model? It kind of, when you realize that riba kind of encompasses everything.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: It’s built into the economy then you find these ideas of, well you know what was the gold system of the past and does currency mean, what does money actually mean and how could you have an actual, “Islamic System”?

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: These two things kind of came together, interest in computers, interest in cryptography, interest in computer hacking mixed in with this interest in alternative financial systems or a potential system that could be riba free; that could be interest-free completely.

That’s really what got me interested and that’s why I kind of been following cryptocurrency along the way here and there as much as I can kind of keep up with the – what’s going on in the emerging technology.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: And then you know as soon as this boom started in like 2016…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: …2017, that’s when I started getting questions, I’m like, “Oh, there’s actually Muslims in the community who actually know what Bitcoin is!” Like, I’m not the only one. And they’re not even…exactly…

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: And people started asking me these questions like, “What do you think about that?” And I’m like, “Oh…” and I’m like the only, you know, pretty much the only scholar at that time who could even explain what it is. Like, can even tell you something otherwise everyone is just like, “What are you talking about?”

Andre Rishi: Right. Right.

Early Fatwa on Bitcoin

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, that’s kind of what sparked my interest initially and then what really got me more motivated was when I saw some fatwas, or some like Islamic rulings, coming up about scholars commenting on Bitcoin. And I looked at it and I said, “You know I don’t really think you understood the technology very well.” So, that got me more kind of a little bit aggravated you could say.

Andre Rishi: Right. Right. Right.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, that’s kind of what sparked my interest, kind of interest increased and increased over time.

Andre Rishi: Right. Right. Give me one second, I just want to make sure as we’re doing this, does my video look frozen to you?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah, it does.

Andre Rishi: It does? All right, so hold on and see if I can pause. All right, so, I completely agree in what you’re saying in regards to when you have scholars out there who are giving fatwa and again like you said they are giving these fatwas saying that this is what you know, Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and our messenger say, when I’m seeing some of the reasons why –

Well, first of all, even before I get into certain, some of the rulings, what has been the general consensus amongst the scholars as it relates to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole whether it is a halal or haram?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, the majority of scholars who issued statements initially, I think they were a little bit politically motivated because they were more issued by like State agencies run like State of Egypt, the official – the Egyptian body from the State issuing the fatwa.

And so, they said it promotes terrorism and it makes it easy for money laundering and there’s a lot of danger to the State. Initial Turkish fatwa was something ever similar.

Andre Rishi: Hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Many other independent fatwas coming out of Madinah University and others not necessarily representing the school but individual scholars saying that this cryptocurrency has no real existence. So you can’t – something that has no real existence is not valid in Sharia; it’s not considered to be something valid.

Other people talking about the danger of it you know talking about it’s a bubble, it’s going to burst and it’s going to become just nothing because it has no value because it’s not tangible. So, these are the kind of the most of the fatwas that were coming out.

I think it’s changing slightly so there are a few people now kind of saying we should be careful about it. It’s very volatile. People can lose a lot of money but at the same time, we can’t just say that it’s haram.

We can – we have to be a little bit more careful. That’s – things are changing slightly but those are the initial fatwas. Most of them were saying that it’s haram to use which we shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

Andre Rishi: Yeah. And even I’d have to say that I remember seeing or hearing some of the fatwas that didn’t make complete sense to me like there was a – it seemed like there was such a huge push between some of the shuyukh, the scholars, saying that well, it’s not backed by a central bank.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Mm-hmm.

Andre Rishi: And I remember thinking to myself saying, but during the time of the Messenger,  may peace be upon him, there was no such thing as a central bank back then and I– and granted I’ve never studied all the hadith that’s out there to see whether if banks are ever mentioned. But even in the Qur’an, you don’t hear anything about banks being mentioned and money or currency having to be backed by banks. So, that was something I thought was a little odd.

Also, the whole thing of anonymity. So, one thing that I saw a lot of the scholars mentioning too that “It’s anonymous”, “It’s anonymous”, “It’s anonymous”. And truth be told that anyone who studies Bitcoin, in particular, it’s not actually really fully anonymous.

There are some other altcoins out there like Monero, I think, is actually is more so anonymous. But even aside from that, I think modern-day currency – I always tell people that I think modern-day currency is it is a – cash is probably anonymous.

And even if you look back in the day of the Messenger of Allah, may peace be upon him. They use of gold and the transaction of gold back then between two people again, that can be anonymous.

You wouldn’t know – you can’t tie but you can’t link the gold back to the person who used it. So I didn’t – I was kind of curious that does the Sharia stipulate anything about currency having to be – it shouldn’t be anonymous or should be backed by a central bank or anything as such?

Money During the Umayyad Caliphate

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah. No, there’s nothing like that technically. The closest, closest thing that you could get is basically what happened was after the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

Andre Rishi: Sallallahu alaihi wasallam (may peace be upon him)

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: During the Umayyad Caliphate, the Khilafa, when Islam became a very powerful force, it was spreading to different regions. Muslims were at war with the Roman Empire at that time. And up until that point in time, the Muslims were using Roman stamped gold coins.

Basically, Roman produced gold coins. Because the gold coins have to have like a certain type of measurement so you know exactly what they are, the Dinar or the Silver Dirham that exists. So, they’re being minted basically by the Roman Empire.

So, Muslims were using these Roman coins and then what ended up happening about maybe 50 years or 60 years something after the Prophet, peace be upon him, they decide we need to stop using these Roman coins. We’re going to mint our own coins and we’re only going to accept taxes. We’re only going to accept Zakah for distribution from our own coins.

Andre Rishi: Hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Right? So, that was kind of like a State-mandated thing. Now, you can imagine Muslim scholars at that time saying, “You know what? This is – this is a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with that. Let’s stop using the Roman coins that we’re going to use the Muslim empire coins.” Right?

So, that can become like a fatwa where it’s like you know you have to follow the points that are made by this specific group or by this government because that’s better for the stability of society rather than using some foreign coins where we’re at war with these people, we don’t want to support them, right?

So, that makes sense and there’s a sense of security in that. So, you know that if someone is coming to you with another coin that looks like a gold coin and I guess I don’t know you bite on it or something like that and you’re like yeah, it seems good but it may be a counterfeit, right?

So, it’s safer for you if you’re using a minted coin than if you were using a non-minted one because of a potential counterfeit, you might get harmed. You can understand like is fatwa something along the lines with support the government in having decentralized minting of coins for the protection of people, right? So, that’s the closest thing you can get.

Now, to make the argument and take that same argument say, “Ok, therefore we need to have a central bank.” It’s quite different because a central bank is setting the value of the coin itself and has the potential to manipulate the value of that currency. So, there are two different things, that’s the closest that someone can find historically to some type of Sharia presence.

Andre Rishi: Ok. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not only that too, but like you said, the bank being able to set the value and now, they– especially with our currency not being backed by anything. They literally can just print as much currency as they want to flood the market with.

So, it seemed like there’s no limit to it. So, it seems like that would be – that in itself to me seems like it can be a form of like a silent theft. And I don’t know – I don’t know the exact ayah in the Qur’an, but just to summarize, audhubillah min al-shaytaan ir-rajeem (I seek refuge in Allah from shaytan the rejected), is that the ayah in the Qur’an, Allah says something along the lines that you should not usurp the wealth of others.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Mm-mm-mm.

Andre Rishi: You shouldn’t usurp the wealth of others.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yes.

Andre Rishi: So, when you see banking systems develop an economic system as such from what I see, it is a silent theft because the more currency they print, the less value the currency that you currently hold has.

So, all your work and labor that you put into earning this currency, you don’t get the full value of it because a group of people or cartel or a centralized system has usurped that value from you.

So, I know sometimes when I see, you see scholars out there telling people, like funneling people back into a central banking system. To me sometimes it’s like you’re funneling them right back into a system that steals from them which is really, I find really interesting, very interesting. So, yeah. Yeah.

So, what about the average Muslim who’s looking at this and saying, ‘You know what? You know I hear these fatwas and some of those are from my favorite Shuyukh, but I think, they may be wrong and XYZ but at the same time, they want to definitely be a good Muslim. So, what is the ruling on fatwas in regards to the obligation of following fatwas?

The Obligation of Following Fatwas

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Hmm, that’s a good question. So, you know the average person, who’s not a specialist, they should rely on fatwas because they shouldn’t just take the law unto their own hand and say, “Well, I’m going to interpret the Qur’an and the hadith however I think is right.”

There’s a less likelihood of them arriving at a correct answer. You know, it’s almost like you trust your doctors, you trust your lawyers, you trust your architect that you know if you’re going to build a house you want to get someone who understands architecture.

They know how to build, you know the engineer or someone knows how to build this house, you don’t just go and like grab some wood and then I’ll just hammer it into the ground and you know, I think I’ll be all right. You don’t want that, right?

So, there is a sense of reliance that you should have on scholars collectively. Now, what we’re talking about is a fatwa is usually a statement of one specific scholar. And again, it’s their interpretation of what they think the Sharia stands for, right? And they could be mistaken but usually you should not abandon a fatwa unless there’s another fatwa from an equally or a more competent scholar.

So, what people should realize is that look, when it comes to Bitcoin, when it comes to cryptocurrency as a whole, there’s not that many fatwas on them because it’s a new technology and it’s something that has not really been around for a long time.

It’s not been researched for a long time. It’s not hit the fatwa question sites for a long time where now they have six months, one year to kind of let it simmer in their minds, do some more research, get some funding to have a council go and do some research and then come up with some papers that are really high quality one research papers.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: But because that’s not happened yet, you have to take some of the fatwas that have come out with a grain of salt and say, “Ok, you know what? This issue has not been given enough time to really fully understand it, grasp its origins.” And that’s what’s going to happen in any type of new fatwa that comes out, you know.

The moment the first sheep was cloned for example, right? People are like, “Oh, give us a fatwa on you know what do we say about cloning?” Right? I mean you’re going to get some fatwas and they’re from qualified people. It’s not like the people are not qualified.

They’re qualified in the Islamic aspect of it but they are not qualified in Ok, what is – how does cloning work exactly, you know? What are the ramifications, scientific, political, ethical ramifications of cloning? That’s whole, that’s a large discussion. Right?

So, what happens is you have to have knowledge of both of these things, right? And at the same time, the scholars are getting questions like this which are very complex, they’re new and people need answers immediately. They’re like, “I’m going to buy this tonight. I need an answer. Now!”

And so they’re like, “Ok, we’re going to try and give you something of what we kind of think it is.” And most of the people who are actually giving fatwas on new issues they’re saying “Look, this is based on our preliminary research. This is based on our minimal research. This is what we see and the opinion may change in two years.

It may change in five years when a little bit more research is done, we understand the issue a little bit better and we have more people on the council of scholars who can help us to kind of think through this issue.”

So, that’s the way we should kind of perceive these fatwas that are coming out because they’re still new. Most people did not get questions about cryptocurrency until about 2017, maybe 2016, definitely not before 2014. It really wasn’t well-known. So, that’s still fairly new.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, it’s going to require simple processing there.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm. I know I probably started asking questions in 2015. Like I started reaching out to scholars back then and you know hamdullah, I got honest answers. Pretty much, they all was like, “I don’t know.”

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Mm-hmm.

Andre Rishi: Simply said, I don’t know. That’s it. They have nothing else to say. I will say though that right now from what I see, it seems like the majority, even if it’s a few scholars, the majority of those – of that pool of scholars have ruled it to be haram.

And the reason being is because they simply say that is simply not a currency. And for me, when I look at that, I think to me it would serve the purpose more of they were a little more nuanced in how they come about the ruling.

So, one thing that I did want to ask from your understanding of cryptocurrency, do you see right now as a currency or as an asset or just a digital token?

Is Bitcoin a Currency According to Islamic Law?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Hmm. I mean again, we can get into the philosophy of what a currency means. But understanding the way currency functions today in terms of fiat currency and different currencies throughout the world I personally see it as a currency. Because the idea of – the idea of fiat currency meaning like this has been declared to be something of value by government, right? So, that’s fiat– that’s what fiat means.

So, that idea of fiat doesn’t necessarily have to come from a government, it can come from any group of people now in a – just international network. So, if people consider it to be something of value that they will use it as a currency, then the fiat part of it is done by people due to their trust and due to their wanting it to be used as something of value.

So, I see it personally as currency. And I think currency is something that can be – the way we understand currency today is something that could be introduced, it can be removed, it can become extinct.

So, that’s the way currency operates today. That’s the way most of the rest of our currency is. Now, whether it’s the – you know, how does it compare to gold currency and all that is a whole another discussion but I would rule that as a currency.

Andre Rishi: Ok. Hamdullah. Yeah. It’s funny because with one of the teachers I was studying with, he – one of the things that he did mention was – again, going back to government saying that government pretty much puts the stamp on saying what is and what is not a currency.

And my thought was when it comes to cryptocurrency, this is something that – again, going back to your studies on computer science and hackers, this is something that someone can sit down in their home and now the knowledge and the information is out there where they can program a currency and print out it for anyone to use. It’s that simple now.

And I do think that I think that we’re probably going to see down the road where again, if it’s not my children – I don’t have children yet, God willing, insha’Allah, but let’s just say, your children or grandchildren, it will get to the point where they will be able to program their own currency.

So, I’m curious is that at what point does Islam say, “Well look, as…” I think you’re definitely thinking more long-term in regards to with some of your thoughts that you’re sharing. But what will they say in regards to be the average small group of people just declaring a currency that they’ve come up with for themselves?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Right. So, I mean again, it’s hard to define in this day and age exactly what is – what is the quantity that you need for people to buy in and what their geographical distance should be. So, there are no clear-cut rules especially in this day and age where we’re all interconnected across the borders.

So, it’s very hard to make a claim and say this is how many people need to adopt it. So, yeah, there are some risk anyone can just make their own currency. But if that currency is being used by a significant number of people and they’re valuing it without defining what that significant number of people is then that should suffice it for being a currency. Because if you look at what currency was primitively, you look at small little village somewhere and…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: And they have different currencies and all of a sudden they find some shells in the water and they’re like, “Oh, these shells are kind of rare and not – there’s not that many of them, Ok, let’s go ahead and use this as a bartering system. This becomes our currency where we’re going to have to trade all these products all the time, we use the shells as intermediaries and they represent some store value.”

As long as that’s recognized, you could make anything into a currency. You could take a shell to currency. You could take a random colored rock because that has a certain restricted number within a society and there’s like a – you can call it a social contract or something among those people that they’re saying, “We agree to transact and give certain type of value to this state that’s there.” Right? And that’s exactly what a self-program cryptocurrency would end up becoming.

Andre Rishi: Right. Right. Now, with that being said and I know you said you see it as a currency, one argument that I have definitely seen some scholars make in regards to ruling out Bitcoin in particular, not other altcoins but Bitcoin, in particular, is that trade cannot be instantaneous.

So, for instance, when you make a let’s say a transaction with bitcoin per se, it is at least a minimum of about 10-minute window of time for the transaction to truly be confirmed, even though you’ll see it pop-up on the ledger instantly. So, what are your thoughts on this?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yes, I mean that is one of the issues with Bitcoin. So, it does take some time to process. But again, I think the – that’s due to the technology. So, again, the risks that’s actually involved of it not processing, like you said, it appears instantaneously, right?

So, even with processing at the same time, the appearance ends up being that you know this is something that has transferred over. There are many other types of transactions. I mean if you look at, even when you send money to someone else in a bank or something that used – you write me a check, I’ll deposit that check. It’s not going to come instantaneously.

But what is the ruling on ownership? The moment you handed me that check, and the moment I put it into the bank, that is technically considered to be my property even though it’s not really appeared, even from the Islamic perspective. You’ve handed the money over to me. That property is considered to have transferred over to me, right?

So, from that perspective, this is not a major issue because we already deal with that on a regular basis. What’s the most important thing in Islam is to understand who owns what at what particular period of time and what level of danger or risk is there that a transaction is somehow not going to process such that someone is going to think that they’re getting property transferred but they don’t get it transferred. Right?

I think risk is fairly low as far as my understanding goes, and that’s why it’s not a major issue. We’re like looking and look at this and nitpick on this detail because this stuff happens all the time.

Bitcoin and Riba al Buyu / Riba al Fadl

Andre Rishi: Right. Right. Right. And just hearing you say that definitely clarifies certain things to me and makes more sense. I mean I posted a blogpost some months back where I was talking about trade. And one of the things – again, I always tell people who come to my blog, I’m not a scholar.

I take information from scholars I’ve studied with and share that with them. I know one of the teachers I have had before clearly doesn’t see this as a currency and so because of that, when people had asked me in regards to my studies with Bitcoin and regards to trade I would always say, “Well, at this time, if I don’t see any consensus that people are calling it a currency, then my thought process was that the rules of riba al-buyu, also known as riba al fadl, wouldn’t apply to it simply because there was no consensus and they didn’t call it a currency.

However, from your viewpoint if you can see it, as a currency right now then it would be that the rules of riba al-buyu would apply, no?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Absolutely. In fact that’s why I’m very – I actually read a fatwa that said it’s a digital asset and they were making an argument about it being an asset but then the rules of riba don’t apply and that’s very – it’s very problematic because then you can just justify, if you can’t loan money to someone else, you can go ahead and do the whole riba business with cryptocurrency saying that we’re selling you an asset with the profit and there’s Murabaha and all of that and – I mean that’s not the way it functions.

So, I mean I think sometimes people will go down into the technical details and forget that you have to look at the substance and the spirit of what – of how this thing functions and what it’s supposed to do and what was it intended to be and what it generally is rather than trying to make some analogy based upon you know some pre-conceived definition that you have in a book of Islamic law or something like that. I think that’s where the issue arises.

Andre Rishi: Ok. Ok. So, then what are your thoughts when it comes to other aspects of a cryptocurrency such as mining? I’ve seen some scholars here that all of it is haram. All of it, whether you’re doing transactions, whether you’re mining, all of it is not in line with the Islam. What are your thoughts on mining?

Thoughts on Bitcoin Mining

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, I mean in terms of mining, there are two aspects. One of them is the electricity consumption, you know, so that’s obviously concerning. So, you know, I mean they say if it becomes so big and you know it takes up a lot of electricity. There’s no doubt about that. Obviously, there’s ways around that. I mean ways to overcome that shouldn’t be too difficult to think of other mechanisms and alternatives.

The idea of mining if you look at it again, what is the substance of mining? The whole point according to my understanding of mining was two things, I mean one, is that they wanted you know Satoshi, whoever that was, wanted to come up with this idea of gradually introducing more and more currency and then putting a cap on it. Right?

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, there is that cap when it comes to bitcoin and mining it, built-in. So, this is a problem that’s technically going to resolve itself. I mean the mining is going to be done after certain period of time. That’s the way he planned it to be. And I think that’s a genius way to think about it from that perspective.

One of the ways to restrict the harms from the current financial system that – one of the reasons why cryptocurrency was made in the first place was because you could just manipulate it anyway you want and it just – you can keep on printing more and more like you said, right?

So, once you put a cap, you’ve really – you’ve taken a really big step in preventing that type of abuse from taking place. So, I think the cap is very, very important. And obviously, he had a very good reason or they, whoever they are, they had a very good reason…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: …for putting out this gradual thing in order to get more acceptance, in order to give an incentive to people who are not just going to do this for the purpose of verifying transactions because there’s not going to be that much money initially.

It seems like an ingenious idea to me. So, it makes sense, people have gone in and said “Well, where’s this money coming from intrinsically? And you know you’re somehow getting money for nothing.” I know it’s somewhat of a far analogy but the analogy is like you know you’re putting effort in to actually mine gold. Right?

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: That’s where the term mining came from. So, yeah, they say well gold has intrinsic value so that’s why you’re doing it. But I mean again that’s another argument whether it has intrinsic value or you know, declared value due to historical reasons and all that. So, I don’t have intrinsically an issue with mining because I understand the purpose of it and the substance of it and the spirit of it.

Once – and if there’s another way or a better way around that, I think it wouldn’t be necessary and I think because cryptocurrency has already become so popular perhaps the transaction cost or whatever technology to transact through it would suffice and people would make enough money just through that without having to do all of this mining. So, I mean my – I would say, I haven’t really thought too much about this issue but I would say that my initial thoughts are, even if mining was like stopped right now.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: It wouldn’t hurt cryptocurrency and people would still be able to charge certain amount of money for their services and it would still – the service would be valuable, the person would still make a profit like many companies are doing and people would be willing to pay that and they would still prefer that and the traditional methods of currency that we have today.

Investing in Bitcoin

Andre Rishi: Ok. Yeah. I agree. I do see that. I do see that. So then, what you’re saying in regards to people being involved in it in transactions and mining, obviously you have the people who are looking to invest and I do know, I do see people that come to my site who they – they do have some knowledge of cryptocurrency and they may not necessarily agree with some of the fatwas that they give and they still move ahead and look to invest.

So, I want to hear what your thoughts on investing.  And before I do that, I definitely want to preface this and say that none of us here financial advisors so please – we’re not here giving you financial advice and what to do or what not to do just speaking generally. Generally speaking for the average Muslim who does have some understanding how this works and is seeking to step in and get involved in this. What are your thoughts in those thinking about investing in it?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Right. So, here’s the thing, this is like investing in any other currency, Ok? For me, this is a currency. So, if you’re going to invest in any currency the Islamic definition or the Islamic idea of investing into a currency is not, is not really there, right?

Because currency is not supposed to – intrinsically, it’s not supposed to be fluctuating from an Islamic perspective. You got your gold coin, you got your silver coin, that’s what’s considered to have value. You don’t go like “Ok. I’m going to take my gold coins now and I’m going to buy a bunch sea shells from the village that uses sea shells for currency with the hopes that I can go ahead and sell this sea shells back to my other village for more money than I bought them for.” Right?

So, the idea of investing in currency as far as I understand it is not really something in Islam that’s there. All right. So, from that perspective you don’t like buy and sell currency that kind of comes in the idea of riba. Riba in the sense that you know you’re using currency, using money to make more money that’s not an asset that’s supposed to actually have a certain value that’s increased. That’s the fundamental part of it.

Then you got the practical part of it. Currencies are going to change, right? And they are being valued and devalued. So, the only time that it’s normally acceptable to purchase currency for the “purpose of investing” is when you have a strong reason to believe that either your currency that you have is going to be devalued or the other currency – it’s more about your currency being devalued relative to the other currency which means that that currency is going to be increased in value. To give you an example, Ok let’s – give you an example, let’s say, you live in Zimbabwe, Ok? And…

[Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Oh yes.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: …before what happened…

Andre Rishi: May Allah helped them. Aameen.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Aameen.

Andre Rishi: Aameen.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, let’s say you live in Zimbabwe 2005 and all you do is you transact in the Zimbabwe whether they’re dollars or whatever they were.

Andre Rishi: Their currency. Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Their currency. And somehow you get information that this government is not doing very well and they don’t seem to be making good decisions and I think there’s a very significant risk that my currency in Zimbabwe is somehow going to devalue itself and I’m going to end up losing – a lot of people are going to end up losing a lot of money because this is an unstable currency and the government is going to make decisions and things are going to happen.

You say, “You know what? There’s a big risk in that and I have a very good insight that this is likely to happen. Let me go ahead and protect myself and take some of the money that I have even though I’m a Zimbabwean, I live in Zimbabwe, let me go and put my money in a safer place.

Let me go convert it into US dollars, for example, right?” And then hyperinflation happens and then you realize oh that guy got saved because he realized that his currency was going to be devalued.

So, the same principle applies. When we talk about investing into a currency, when we have an understanding that our currency relative to the other currency is somehow something is going to happen to it and we’re going to have a problem that’s kind of like a flip way of looking at “Ok, this other currency is going to be going up relative to my currency that I happen to hold all of my assets in.” Right?

So, when you lose trust in your own currency and you put your trust in another currency, what you’re doing is you’re switching from one currency to another because you’ve lost trust in it. Rather than looking at it from the financial transaction of “I’m going to buy $10,000 worth of cryptocurrency and I’m going to – the intention of selling it when it hits $30,000.” Right?

So, that’s kind of the way that it should be viewed from Islamic perspective because we don’t buy and sell currency as an asset because it’s not an asset.

Andre Rishi: Ok. All right. So, again, just to clarify, you’re saying that going in with the intention of like well, I’m going to purchase XYZ cryptocurrency because I believe that in three years, it will be worth $15,000 instead of $100 today that that intention is not allowed Islamically or shunned upon Islamically.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah.

Andre Rishi: Yeah, Ok as opposed to just saying hey, I just think maybe the country I’m in like the US is just going to keep on inflating the money supply and it’s going to lose value. So, let me go and hedge by purchasing other currency.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah.

The Philosophy of Bitcoin and How it Relates to Islam

Andre Rishi: Ok. All right, cool. So, with that being said, I think that’s a really good segue to talk about the philosophy behind Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole. So, what are your thoughts on the philosophy behind this new technology and how does that, how does that work with Islam?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Ok. Where should I start?

Andre Rishi: Ok in – I know that my understanding is this whole thing really came about with – at least I don’t want to go too far back because cryptocurrency happened before Satoshi, it was already talked about. With Satoshi, in his white paper, it does seem to be a reference between a 2008 financial crash and wanting to have the philosophy behind having a decentralized system, a currency that’s set on a decentralized system that would be of benefit to everyone.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Right. Right. Right. So, you know the philosophy of it, it makes sense from two perspectives and it doesn’t make sense from one perspective. So, two perspectives which are in line with Islam is that governments – currency is not supposed to be something that can be easily be manipulated by government.

Because what that does is that puts people’s assets, it puts their money, it puts their property all at risk and at risk of a simple government decision. And that’s very, very dangerous and there’s something known as principles or the underlying objectives of the Sharia, it’s called maqasid al-Shariah.

Andre Rishi: Hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: And five principles – basically, it’s five principles that underlie every single rule in Islam. And one of those principles is the preservation of wealth. So, if you look at you know if you ask, well, why is stealing haram? Why is stealing prohibited in Islam?

Well, because God wanted to preserve the wealth of people. That’s why when you say, why is drinking alcohol forbidden in Islam? Because one of the second rules is the preservation of the intellect. God wanted society as a whole, everyone to preserve their intellect because that’s how they make rational, reasonable decisions and moral decisions.

So, you want to preserve certain things within society, one of them – one of the objectives, underlying or overlying objectives is the preservation of wealth. So, when you have a system where a government can somehow, anyone can become elected or become leader and then make a decision and somehow take people’s wealth.

I mean basically, you’re taking the wealth by devaluing whatever they own without even having to exert the physical military force to go and steal from them.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: That’s very dangerous. So, that goes against one of the principles of the Sharia, the underlying principles of Sharia. So, in that perspective, the idea of a decentralized currency makes a lot of sense and fits into the paradigm of Islam.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: From the second perspective, you have a quick transfer of currency, transfer of money or transfer of goods with a very quick way of paying. So, this is a faster means of technology without exorbitant amounts being charged particularly to people who cannot afford such amounts like third world countries, you know the amount of money that gets sent from wealthy countries, “first world countries” to like to poor developing countries and their relatives back home, it’s in the billions. I mean it’s huge.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: There’s a lot of money that’s sent back and the amount that these people are going to have to pay because they don’t have, in their village, they don’t have a bank, branch or something like that setup, they have to pay a really large fine, or fee.

You could say a fine in a sense for not being developed or whatever, [maybe] war happened you know 40 years ago or something like that. So, that’s very sad. And this actually, this technology can and actually is being used to help a lot of poor people and that completely fits in line with the principles of Islam as well. So, these two things directly fit in line with the principles of Islam.

Andre Rishi: Hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: The only thing that where you can say there is some level of danger for decentralization is that Islam does recognize that you have to have a just government, put certain principles in place to prevent people from doing bad stuff.

So, sometimes may not be legitimately used, but sometimes government needs to crack down on people who are funding money launderers, drug dealers, terrorists, all of that stuff. That stuff happens and if they have a little bit more oversight that can be a thing if used correctly to prevent people from doing bad things. Again, now, the flip side of that is the government can be doing bad things about it.

Andre Rishi: Yeah, exactly.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, that’s why you have to have this balance.  We have to weigh it out, right? So, that’s where it becomes a very difficult decision to make in terms of who do you trust more? Do you trust the government more or a government more or specific government more?

Or do you trust that the average person is not likely to engage in this type of activity that’s going to harm society? So, kind of comes back down to what is going to be better for society as a whole? And not every country, not every time, not every period, not every society you can give the exact same answer.

Some societies work better, some societies, it’s worse. So, you go into very corrupt country and you look at that country and you say, “Is it better that this currency is centralized or decentralized?” We could pretty easily say, “You know, this government is so corrupt, we definitely are better off with the decentralized currency.”

Andre Rishi: Right.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Whereas you could go to another one and you say, “Oh, these people aren’t so bad, but there are some really bad people within that society but they’re not in government. They could potentially do a lot more harm so maybe we should give government the benefit of the doubt here.” So, it’s not a clear-cut black or white answer all the time.

Andre Rishi: Right. Right. And I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, when I look at a lot of again, just the economic system that we have worldwide for me and not just me. I think I, a lot of people see that there’s just so much corruption and then I think that’s why you see so many, I can’t say so many people, but at least groups of people who are very open to and push for a sort of decentralized system where they figured, “All right, well, all of us say have an invested stake and we all want to protect our wealth.”

So, if we all sort of spread out trust, then you know they do see that as a more reputable, possibly more solid system.

But like you said, there are so many nuances to that which also leads me to what you believe the future is for cryptocurrency. One of the things I tell a lot of the viewers of the podcast, people come to the site, and this is one thing that sometimes I think, I’m not even sure if some of the scholars really understand right now. I always say that this is more than Bitcoin. Bitcoin could be gone tomorrow.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah.

The Future of Bitcoin in the Muslim World

Andre Rishi: I think that the – I do think that the technology though, I’m just curious, what are your thoughts on the cryptocurrency and the future, how that relates to the Muslim world as a whole?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah, I mean I think cryptocurrency is not going to be going away. It’s a concept. Like you said, I agree Bitcoin may disappear. It may disappear in a year. It may disappear in 20 years.

But the idea of a currency whether it’s through cryptography or through some other means, a decentralized currency, the idea is not likely going to go away because people believe in it. And as long as people believe in that idea, you can’t just take it away. It’s going to be very, very hard to take it away.

And in terms of what is the future, how is it going to look? How is it going to look in the Muslim world? It’s hard to speculate. I think time will tell. But I think it’s going to develop over time and I think we’re going to find more and more uses and different uses for things like this.

So, you find people already – people taking blockchain technology as one aspect of cryptocurrency, it’s not the decentralized aspect but they’re taking this like implementing it within their own system even within the banking system and all of that. The decentralized aspect of it is something that’s going to remain as a means of transfer or –  what do you call it? A money transfer.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Money transfer that’s something that’s going to continue. It’s not likely to go away unless somehow massive competitions somehow keeps up and it doesn’t require it to be the case anymore.

So, if that was the case, then yeah, things are going to change. Like the postal service took a huge hit when emails started becoming international phenomenon and everyone has an email and send messages and how many people send letters?

Andre Rishi: Right.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: It’s not that much. So, they’re obviously going to lose out. So, I think it’s going to be something like that in terms of people who like to transfer money or who are responsible for transferring money, making currency exchanges and all that. Cryptocurrency will become part and parcel of their system or those systems will go away and cryptocurrency will replace, for the most part, that type of transfer system.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: From there, what’s going to happen afterwards? I mean I think there are so many possibilities. It really depends on what Muslims do and how much freedom they have to actually develop something…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: …across this new one that was coming up called OG OneGram.

Andre Rishi: OneGram, yes, yes.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah, so it’s like a cryptocurrency that is somehow tied at minimum value to one gram of gold.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: persons look at that and they’re like, we need to go back to the gold standard. They said that Libya once tried the gold standard and look what happened to them?

Andre Rishi: Yes, God forbid God and I personally think there is some truth in that and I think there’s some truth in that.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah, absolutely. I think so too. And Malaysia, they have been talking about it for a very long time. And I think a lot of the Muslims who kind of know they are very excited about this idea but it’s extremely difficult to somehow go back to a gold standard when – like a traditional gold standard when the entire world economy is taking a different turn and the way gold is being controlled and manipulated all of those things.

Now, this potentially could be that one thing that people are waiting for to overcome all those obstacles and somehow structure something where you can either get – you can get back to a standard that resembles the pros of a gold standard which is what Muslims have been really calling for and waiting for actually.

And that would cause a lot more stability within economies, a lot less speculation which is definitely in line with the principle of Islam, less riba-dominated all sorts of transactions and just the economy itself. Right? So, there’s I think where cryptocurrency can lead. How it will lead there exactly I can’t say.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: I think this is one of the technologies that could potentially help us get us there if we’re doing the right things and we’re making the right decisions with regards to it and the leadership is going to give people the freedom to develop these things.

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: And not put a ton of hurdles in their way to prevent this technology from actually getting there. It’s kind of like electric cars. I mean the technology has been there for a long time but the oil companies and stuff.

They have been preventing all of these. Solar technology, same thing. Now, it’s finally starting to take off, why? Because some of those hurdles have been overcome. So, as long as the hurdles don’t get in the way, I think it’s a lot of development then.

Andre Rishi: Yeah. And I think what you’re saying with hurdles is absolutely right. And again, it goes back to what I was saying earlier in regards to I really wish I would have – we would have seen more nuance from some of the scholars on their rulings because I would hate to see them, by simply painting a broad brush and saying that it’s all haram in some ways to kill the research and development that can go into this new technology.

Because I look at it as like Ok, well, cryptocurrency right now is not perfect. It’s in its beginning stages.

So, I would much rather them say something along the lines or say, “Ok, well, maybe this is makruh (disliked) or maybe this aspect of it doesn’t work but if you can fix it here or do X, Y, and Z here then we can take a second look at it.”

I would love it if we had scholars that would dimply encouraging Muslims to actually do research into this new technology and to find a way for it to be better for all of humanity as opposed to just striking the whole thing down and then just keeping quiet and not saying anything else.

Is Bitcoin Halal or Haram?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah, well I got good news for you then. And probably this is the last thing I have to say before I have to get going.

Andre Rishi: Yes.Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: I was at a scholar’s conference recently. It’s called the AMJA, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: And there was about you know 150 scholars and about another 200 students of knowledge And Bitcoin came up and there was a presentation given. And one of the head Shaykh, Shaykh Salah Al Sawy, he presented a paper on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And his initial paper seemed like he was going to come out saying that it’s forbidden, the draft of it.

And then finally, when he presented it, he actually said, “You know we cannot outright say that it’s prohibited and we can’t even say that it’s technically even makruh for sure. We can say that it’s somewhere, it might be makruh or it might be permissible, but we still need a little bit more research. But we definitely know we cannot outright say that it’s haram.”

So, after doing more research, he actually changed his view and his view was not – is not just a view of one person. He’s a very heavy-weight scholar so when he gives his view, you got probably the other 150 scholars in the room, most of them are agreeing with him.

So, that’s a good step in the right direction. I was very happy that came out. And that paper was written in Arabic. So, it has been translated yet. But I think that’s a good step in the right direction. That was just a few weeks ago.

Andre Rishi: Masha’Allah Hamdullah. I’ll be on the lookout for that and then I’ll probably touch base with you to see if that does come out in the English version so I can talk about it here. I don’t want to keep you too long because I know it’s already – we’ve been going at this for like a little over an hour now I believe or just about an hour.

What is California Islamic University?

But I did really – I would love for you to share with my audience what is California Islamic University? I mean here you are with years of study under your belt, a bachelor’s, a master’s degree, studying worldwide and now, you have founded this university, if you can share with us what is this all about and how can people get involved?

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Sure. So, about five years ago, I was out of the country and I was thinking, am I just going to come back to the country and just be an Imam again or, how do I take people to the next level?

So, I came up with the idea, I said, you know we need an educational institution that teaches people, gives them a foundational knowledge of Islam that I wish I had. I mean, I’ve always had a lot of questions about Islam and that’s the reason why I went abroad to study. I traveled to different countries. I didn’t want to be an Imam. I never wanted to become a scholar or anything like that. I just wanted to learn my religion.

And I think there are a lot of people like me but not all of them have to quit their jobs. They don’t all alone to you know have to drop out of school and like travel to some random country and go through different living circumstances, culture shock and all of that stuff.

But I said, how can I make the knowledge that I’ve learned that you’d find in the average seminary, which is like in Islamic university, and take the stuff that is the most relevant to Muslims living in the west and sift out the stuff that’s the least relevant Muslims living in the west.

And that’s when I said, “You know what? Let me start a school. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to take the curriculum of Madinah University, Al-Azhar University just looked to all of them and start sifting, what’s the most relevant, what’s really not relevant to the average person unless they’re going to specialize and become like a scholar.”

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: And I started reconstructing a curriculum from scratch on what’s going to be the most important thing. So, we cover – basically, I made 22 courses.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: We covered everything from the life of the prophet, peace be upon him.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: …from that Islamic law, the Sharia, the principles of making everything from wudu, to fasting, to zakah, to marriage, to divorce, the correct way to get divorced if that ever happens, economic transactions.

But every time you studied the subjects not looking at like camels and you know goat, stuff like and replaced it with modern-day examples of what we actually encounter you know.

Andre Rishi: Salla Allahu Alaihi wa Salaam.

So, taking the research that has been done and issues like cryptocurrency and zakah and 401(k) accounts and you know what are modern manifestations of interest in today’s transactions and stock market and options trading and future and you know all of that stuff selling short. Taking that and implementing into the core curriculum.

So, we go from there and we go, “Ok. There’s rules that we’ve got to learn. There’s recitation of the Qur’an that we’ve got to learn. There’s history of the Qur’an. How do you know the Qur’an has been preserved? How is the hadith… How do you know stuff is authentic? Where does all of these come from?” And then supplement that with a few classes like research methodology. How do you research a subject in Islam on your own; under some guidance maybe.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Public speaking, once you got your knowledge down, how do you convey the message of Islam to other people? How do you give a khutbah (Islamic sermon) that people are not going to bring their pillow and fall asleep? Unfortunately, there’s a lot of khutbahs like that.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: So, that’s what we’re trying to do. We have a two-year curriculum. You could do it part-time, you could take six years and do one class a quarter, that’s perfectly fine. And we have quite a few students, you know different parts. We have online students, you can be anywhere in the world. We have students randomly like Taiwan and South Africa.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: …different countries. So, we use top-of-the-line technology and management system technology so that people can take classes at their convenience, according to their own schedule.

You know you don’t got to quit work, you just watch the video later and finish the exam, you get credit for that class. You don’t want to take all the exams, you don’t want to do all that stuff, just take the class as an audit student.

Andre Rishi: SubhanAllah. SubhanAllah.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: You just get the – that’s it.

Andre Rishi: Ok. Ok. So, yes, you can study like, physically on – you have a physical campus.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Physical campus in Fullerton, California. You could do that or you can attend live so you can like actually chat with the teachers and ask questions live. Or, you can watch the videos afterwards. You can attend courses later on. You can learn your Arabic, you can learn your Qur’an, you get your tafsir, you get your hadith.

Andre Rishi: Masha’Allah.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: And do it at your own pace as well.

Andre Rishi: Masha’Allah. Ok so, ok so once they finish this then they should have a basic understanding then, a foundation of Islam that they can go and to the community maybe be, maybe an Imam…

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Probably an assistant Imam.

Andre Rishi: Assistant imam. Ok.

Shaykh Mustafa Umar: Yeah.

Andre Rishi: Ok. Very good. Very good. But what I’m going to do I’m going to leave the link for that website down below so people can check that out as well. I highly encourage people to check it out. I mean I myself am a student of knowledge myself, I’ve studied with like SeekersHub, Qibla for Islamic Science, so I’m definitely taking a look at this for sure since it’s right down the block from me.

I really wanted to thank you for your time today for joining us here on this Islam and Bitcoin Podcast, you shared a lot of information, a wealth of knowledge that I think is highly beneficial to the community and it’s really good to see someone have a very balanced understanding of cryptocurrency as a relates to the world of Islam.

So, we lost our Shaykh. I just heard from him and he said that the battery on his laptop went dead. Alhumdulilah, no worries. It was wonderful having and a beautiful conversation with our dear Shaykh and I wanted to thank Shaykh Mustafa Umar again. Thank him for coming on the, appearing on the Islam and Bitcoin Podcast and having a great conversation with us.

Please do share your thoughts. Leave comments down below and let us know what you think about the conversation we just had. And as always, we say sharing is caring so please do share this podcast far and wide with those who think may benefit from it

And as always, I leave you in the way that I greeted you assalaam alaikum wa rahmatulahi wa barikahtu, Ma’salama. 

PLEASE KINDLY SHARE THIS ARTICLE IF YOU’VE FOUND BENEFIT IN IT

Assalaamu Aleikum everyone! Very excited to have Matthew J. Martin, founder of Blossom Finance, visit us here at Islam and Bitcoin. Join me as I interview Matthew and learn how he is using Bitcoin to create positive change in Indonesia.

Watch the video or read below.

Video Transcript

Gratitude Brings Opportunity

Andre Rishi: All right, Bismillah-ir- Rahman-ir-Rahim. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Today, I would like to welcome Matthew J. Martin to the Islam and Bitcoin Podcast. How are you doing Matthew? Thank you for coming on and nice to have you on board.

Matthew J. Martin:  As-salamu alaykum. Thank you for having me, a pleasure to be here.

Andre Rishi: Hamdullah. So, today we want to learn about you a little bit about your background and this really interesting company that you have called Blossom. We’d love to get into that. But first, you know just wanted to get a little bit of background and if I remember correctly, I did read some articles on you some time back and I remember your work history is really interesting.

Like I remember you told a story where you worked at Home Depot like back in the day and you ended up providing excellent customer service to this one guy who came in and this guy ended up owning, I believe it was an electronics company and he gave you what you said is your big break.

Matthew J. Martin: That’s right.

Andre Rishi: And you actually left Home Depot, went there, worked in a warehouse for a while. And then from there, that’s when you transferred into like software, writing code, software engineering but were you always doing that?

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, that’s right. So, you know as we know from the glorious words of the Quran Allah, subhana wa t’ala, says, “To those who are grateful, We will give more.”

Andre Rishi: Hamdullah.

Matthew J. Martin: Right. And SubhanAllah it’s very true. So, I– my amazing opportunity came when I was inspired actually by the Bible by the Injeel to be thankful for the work that I had, the work that Allah subhana wa t’ala had provided for me as part of my rizq as part of my income.

And it was in a period in my life where I was obviously working at Home Depot is not something most people aspire to. It was not the most glamorous job. But because of my gratitude, I decided to make, to have the intention, the niyyah (intention) to do the best and most excellent work possible in the position I was given.

And it just so happened that that very day I made that intention, someone came in and recognized my attitude and eventually hired me for his electronics company. His name is Allen Burdick, founder of Benchmark Media Systems. They provide the high-end audio electronics. So, that was my foray into the tech world.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: And it all bec– it all came out of gratitude SubhanAllah.

Andre Rishi: SubhanAllah. True indeed. True indeed. And when you were working there, did you do any like coding or software engineering there at all?

Matthew J. Martin: Absolutely. And not initially, the first I would say maybe three to six months, I did basically menial labor. So, I started out building boxes. They were going through a period of expansion, I like, assembled shelves all sorts of just basically whatever they had me do I try to do it with a smile on my face. Eventually got into assembling electronics, testing electronics, and then later, the general manager recognizes that there is potential for me to do other things namely writing software because I was also studying software.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: And they needed some hands to write some software. So, that’s how I got my break into software.

Andre Rishi: Cool, cool. And how did that transition itself into like, e-commerce because your company now deals with finance in the tech world really? So, how did you make the transition with e-commerce, and at that time when this was going on, were you Muslim already?

Stepping into the Tech World 

Matthew J. Martin: The position I just mentioned, my foray into, the tech world I was not Muslim. I became a Muslim in 2010.

Andre Rishi: Hamdullah

Matthew J. Martin: So, I started working in the tech world about 2004, I think 2004.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: So, it’d be all about six years in the tech world before I embraced Islam. So, your question was oh how did I make the transition into financial services? So, just to be clear in terms of terminology, generally, when people refer to e-commerce they’re talking about selling a physical product online.

Andre Rishi: Right, right.

Matthew J. Martin: Finance is more the business of providing capital for a project.

Andre Rishi: Ok. Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: So, they are two different sorts of areas. And financial services broadly is any product that deals with the management of money, the movement of money, the providing of capital. Financial services is a broad umbrella term. So, underneath financial services, you have things like paying and processing which is like Stripe, you have crowdfunding, you have you know credit card processing like Visa and Amex. So, it’s a whole array of things in that…

Andre Rishi: PayPal, all that…

Matthew J. Martin: PayPal absolutely, money transmissions so that’s enabling people to send money overseas or send money to their loved ones like Western Union.

Andre Rishi: MoneyGram.

Matthew J. Martin: So, MoneyGram exactly, that’s another example of money transmission. So– or money remittances is also called. So, I was working, I started in electronics and consumer electronics working at Logitech and I really, to be honest, what facilitated the transition was I got really tired of working really hard every year before Christmas to put our product on the shelf just for Christmas that’s going to go in a landfill in a year or two years.

Andre Rishi: Right, right.

Matthew J. Martin: So, I really felt like I was sort of on this treadmill and it’s like, what’s the point, it’s very useless to just you know– and then there’s like the electronics world there’s rare earth, there’s– I mean some of its conflict minerals they’re going to it and the company is they’re kind of like, “Well, there’s nothing we can do, it’s really hard.”

So, we can’t give you any assurance that the product you’re working on is you know essentially slave labor. So, let’s just you know, it just resonated really negatively with me and– this is all before Islam.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Matthew J. Martin: But I just felt you know I want to– I love software, I really, really love software. I wanted to do something in the pure software world and then maybe move away from hardware. Because that gets you out of the cycle, the Christmas cycle, right? Potentially…

Andre Rishi: So, just pure programming, just straight programming, you love coding then.

Matthew J. Martin: Exactly, yeah. And something specifically that would help people or it’s a product that was providing a fundamental valuable service. So, I said, I don’t want to do– I mean advertising provides a valuable service but I– and that wasn’t really for me.

So, I decided I didn’t want to do advertising. I didn’t want to do social media. I want to do something that provides a more concrete fundamental value to society and that’s how I got into the financial services.

Andre Rishi: Nice, nice. And let me ask this so, on that journey, when did you hear about Bitcoin? And when you heard about Bitcoin did you get it? Meaning like these are…

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, it’s a great que…

Andre Rishi: Ok.

His First Bitcoin Business 

Matthew J. Martin: It’s a great question. So, around I think 2009, I was working for a mobile payments company called Boku. So, I was – me and my other colleagues read the financial tech press because we worked in that world.

So, we became aware of Bitcoin very early on because it was in the financial tech press and the tech press in general. And before that, I had also become very disillusioned with the monetary system, this 60 or 70-year-old experiment with non-convertible fiat money with, basically money that has no backing or no intrinsic value.

So, I was a silver bug, I had been collecting silver as a hedge against inflation which worked out with varying degrees of success but– so I was already very tuned into the idea of sound currency, and then again this is all before Islam. This is before I embraced Islam.

And then when Bitcoin came about, I was like, “Wow! This is great! Someone has figured out a way to do mathematically-backed currency that’s instead of asset-backed, it’s backed by math and proof of work.”

So, I thought it was a great idea but in those days it was let you know it was trading at less than a penny. So, it was just sort of an experiment. I did buy some bitcoin. I think it was less than $10, I don’t know if it was less than $5 but it was in the very early range. I made a little bit of money, not a lot, you know a few thousand dollars.

But I ended up launching a Bitcoin business selling bitcoin basically allowing people to buy small amounts of bitcoin using just their mobile phone, a way to buy really small amounts of bitcoin just to try Bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: What was that app called? What was that app called

Matthew J. Martin: It was called Bitcoin by Mobile.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: So, the idea is if you’ve heard about Bitcoin, you’re like the question especially in those days was, “Where can I buy it?” Now, this is before a Coinbase existed.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Matthew J. Martin: And especially certainly before Coinbase was as easy to use as it is now. They had the, like a checking account and all the stuff. So, my solution, allowed people to buy bitcoin in under a minute and have their first bitcoin, fractional amount of bitcoin in under a minute. And the purchase is charged to their mobile phone.

Andre Rishi: Did it do well? I mean did you have a pretty good audience? Or…

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, it did. The problem with that business is mobile phone companies pay you on a very long time scale. They pay you on a 30, 60, or 90-day receivable time scale. So, I’m basically giving people bitcoin, and then I’m waiting 90 days to collect the money from the bitcoin that I sold them which is just a really, really long time.

So, you need a lot, you need to put a lot of– it was very successful in the sense that I couldn’t keep up with the demand because I needed, I need the operational cash to fund the business. So, yeah, well, I would say it’s very successful. I made a little bit of money at it, Hamdalah.

But ultimately I realized– it highlighted a bigger problem. So, after I became a Muslim you know then I had this business and it’s like, Ok, well, how can I finance the money that I need to keep this business going? You know it was a very profitable business but I need money. How can I finance it?

And all my advisers who were non-Muslims said we’ll just get a loan, get an operational line of credit. And I knew in Islam I couldn’t get a line of credit, I couldn’t do something or sign a contract that has riba, has interest associated with the contract. I knew that wasn’t allowed but I didn’t know what was allowed, what are the preferred modes of Islamic finance. What does Islam say about finance? And what should you do as a Muslim? And so, I asked…

Islamic Finance and Bitcoin

Andre Rishi: Let me just ask you real quick. So, when you came into Islam…

Matthew J. Martin: Yes.

Andre Rishi: Like what was the time frame of you coming into hitting this point now like I’m, I guess I’m trying to figure out how much time that you have to even learn anything about Islamic Finance.

Because it seems that when you come into Islam and then becoming consciously aware, “Oh, I need to do things the correct way.” You know that creates definitely a bump in the road and what were the challenges in learning– in learning what you need to know in regards to Islamic Finance, as you say, in regards to Bitcoin even more so cryptocurrencies.

Matthew J. Martin: Yes. So, the question is what were the challenges? What were the bumps on the road?

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Matthew J. Martin: I mean the challenge is, I think especially in America, there’s a lack of– there’s a general lack of scholarship in the topic of Islamic Finance. I mean Islamic Finance is a term, it’s an industry term. It’s less than 100 years old, right?

When you compare to conventional western banking which is you know many hundreds of years old at this point. So, in general, the Islamic financial economy is immature compared to conventional finance. And as a result, there’s a less of a lack of – excuse me, less of a lack of scholarship and less of a lack of readily available resources, right?

Like if I want to go, if I have a question about fasting. I can very easily search and I get some very good, clear scholarly opinions hadith that support it.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: It’s not that easy with not just Islamic Finance but the principle, the fiqh (understanding of Islamic law), the “fiqhy” principles of business in general.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: The essentials of contracts in Islam. What is a valid contract? What is not a valid contract? All those types of things, in general, they are harder to just quickly get that information. And I feel like we, as an ummah, especially in America, we really suffer from that because the deen (religion) does not just encompass ibadah (worship), right? It’s a whole life system.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: So, all our dealings every day, we have to deal in a halal way with every person that we deal with and we interact with whether it’s buying something from someone or it’s making our salat.

​Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Matthew J. Martin: Both of those things there’s– there is a right way to do that and we need to be aware of that as Muslims. And I feel like unfortunately in the west, especially often too much attention is focused on acts of worship and not acts of daily life which is unfortunate because as Muslims we should be the best example of beneficial, productive upstanding members of society.

And a lot of that involves day-to-day business and day-to-day transactions which falls on to the thick of business.

Andre Rishi: I agree.  I agree. I actually think that as Muslims, we should actually the leaders in the financial sector, in health care, in energy, utilizing Islamic knowledge for the betterment of humanity in those different fields.

Subhan Allah we have, like, a lot in common. Even for myself, I came into Islam in 2010. I heard about Bitcoin in 2012. I didn’t get it right away, you know I was working on some apps with a brother of mine, two of my brothers actually.

One of them is a coder and we were working on developing some apps and I got to a place where I also after really discovering, you know as we discovered, we learn how this economic system works.

Matthew J. Martin: Yes.

Andre Rishi: Fiat-based, riba-backed currency. You know I– it’s funny because you said you got into silver, I was more drawn to gold. So, I was trying to find ways…

Matthew J. Martin: I don’t have enough money for gold. [Laughter] That’s why I got into silver. It’s just cheaper.

Andre Rishi: Not like I had it much on me anyway. I actually– what I wanted to do with at the time was I wanted to find a way to develop an app that would allow people to exchange value using gold, buy goods and services, and whatever with gold, by using an app.

But I wanted to do it in a way where we wouldn’t have to store the gold, we wouldn’t have to hold it. Different depositories could but our app would facilitate the exchanging of gold. I couldn’t really figure out a way to do that. My brother, one of- my youngest brother, came to me and said, “Oh what you want to do that’s pretty much already done.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” He says, “It’s called Bitcoin.” I said, “What?”

So, I went and I looked it up, looked at it, checked it out, and didn’t get it. I probably put it down, didn’t come back to it for some time later. And when I did revisit it just like you’re saying, I actually had went out and tried to investigate with a particular scholar, right?

And scholars out there. And to no avail, a lot of them just simply didn’t know anything about it at all. So, I think…

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, and I don’t think that’s a discredit to them.

Andre Rishi: Not at all.

Thoughts on Bitcoin

Matthew J. Martin: I think Bitcoin is a very complex technology. It’s a game-changing technology. Just like the internet if you said, “How does the internet work?” There’s a lot going on there, there’s so many technologies stacked upon each other that actually make it work and make what we’re doing right now possible.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: So, you know, it’d be like going to a scholar and saying, “Is TCPIP halal?” They’re going to be like…

Andre Rishi: What?

Matthew J. Martin: What? Exactly. But if you say, “Is video chat halal?” So… But bitcoins at that level where it’s like protocol level where it’s really, yeah, it’s– I don’t think it’s necessarily a discredit to scholars– I mean there are scholars giving fatwa that don’t make sense about social media because they don’t understand it.

Andre Rishi: Right

Matthew J. Martin:  Because they have the best of intentions but sometimes they’re old, they don’t– they’ve never used it and they don’t understand it so it’s hard for them to have a context.

Andre Rishi: I agree, I completely agree. So, let me ask you, so now you’re learning about Bitcoin, digital currencies, how did Blossom come about?

Birth of Blossom Finance

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah. Blossom, so as I mentioned I had this need for financing so this put in the back of my mind that there– so in that research you know, after I have learned about different sharia-compliant modes of financing and preferred mode of financing in Islam, I said Ok, well, where are the companies providing those products for small businesses?

I found there really aren’t any. There really aren’t any. So, I had in the back of my mind where – wait a second, there’s a lot of Muslims in the world and you know they probably need financing. There’s a lot of small businesses owned by Muslims like that’s probably an important problem to solve.

So, I was actually in an incubator business, incubator program, for the startup that I mentioned with a brother of mine. It’s called The Boost VC which is a venture capital incubator program focusing on Bitcoin, virtual reality and I think they do some other things now, bots maybe.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: So, they’re like a niche specialty incubator so they focus on specific categories. So, this case it was Bitcoin. And that venture didn’t work out, we realized probably the business we got into the incubator with wasn’t something that would scale and there were some conflicts with my co-founder.

So, I decided to close down the business and call it a day. But I had this other idea in the back of my mind, hey, there’s a way more high-quality problem that needs to be solved. I’m probably the right person to do that because I have this background in financial technology, in building financial tech that scales to millions of people and tens of millions of people, right?

Andre Rishi: And you’re a Muslim.

Matthew J. Martin: And I’m Muslim. Right? So, I have a passion for it. So, I told the – so we didn’t take the money from the investors, from the incubator. We gave them a check back and said, you know we just decided to split up as founders but I said, “Hey look, I have a different idea.

Give me a week, I’ll come back with the demo and a business plan and let me pitch you and I want you to invest in this other thing.” So, they were like, “Ok”, I was like very mysterious about it. And I came back and a week later, gave them a demo and gave them you know, pitch in the idea and then said, “Yeah, we think this is good. We’ll invest in you.”

Andre Rishi: And this is Blossom.

Matthew J. Martin: This is Blossom, that’s right.

Andre Rishi: Ok, so tell us what is Blossom?

Matthew J. Martin: So, Blossom makes it easy and profitable to help eliminate poverty. The way we do that is we collect capital internationally and we deploy that through profitable microfinance in Indonesia. Microfinance means giving entrepreneurs who create small businesses a very small investment but that’s meaningful enough to help them grow a business that provides a livable income.

Andre Rishi: Ok. So, when we talk in US $, $300, $500, $1000

Matthew J. Martin: A lot of times even less than that.

Andre Rishi: Wow.

Matthew J. Martin: So, the average investment that the end beneficiary receives through our platform is about $150, $154.

Andre Rishi: Wow!

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah. But with that money, with the $154, they are able to create a sustainable business that generates a livable income. A lot of– so just some examples of businesses we helped start or help grow, everything from newspaper businesses, retail stores, restaurants…

Andre Rishi: Wow!

Matthew J. Martin: …mechanics, all sorts of things like that. Usually, it’s usually service-based business.

Andre Rishi: It’s very diverse by field.

Matthew J. Martin: Yes.

Andre Rishi: Diversified fields. So, let me ask you then, then since you said it’s you’re providing you know capital funding to entrepreneurs in Indonesia, is the company itself based in Indonesia? Or are you based in the United States?

Matthew J. Martin: No, Blossom is a Delaware corporation. We’re based in the United States. And so far, that’s where all our capital has come from is investors based in the United States.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Blossom Finance is Microfinance

Matthew J. Martin: We use a network model so we don’t actually invest in entrepreneurs directly. We believe just you know in terms of the entrepreneurship model. There are people in Indonesia and all over the world doing what’s called Microfinance as entrepreneurs essentially creating small halal banks, sharia-compliant banks in their communities.

So, these are people who are connected to the local community. They have local knowledge, they know the local people, they know who is creditworthy, who’s not creditworthy. They understand the right parameters for underwriting and investment.

We partner with them and we deploy our capital through those microfinancing institutions. And they ultimately decide who the end beneficiaries will be, who the end recipients of the money will be. So, we don’t dictate we don’t invest directly in entrepreneurs. We invest in an institution in a community that invests in individual entrepreneurs.

So, we craft the overwriting, underwriting parameters like we can say for example, “Well, in your area, we like to invest only in agriculture.” Or “We’d like to invest only in women-led businesses.”

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: Whatever the criteria are, we specify those at a high level and then we leave it up to the microfinance institution to do execute the end financing with the beneficiaries. And ultimately, that model is better for the entrepreneurs because if you’re someone who’s running a corner store or you run a restaurant, you don’t have time to go stand in line in a bank to make a payment.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Matthew J. Martin: Right? To pay back to your investors.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Matthew J. Martin: So, it’s a lot better because on the ground there, they actually go and visit each of the businesses individually every day.

Andre Rishi: Ok. And how was Bitcoin coming into play with the end-user? Or is it not? Is it just between the financial institutions, the end-user is just getting the currency, in their local currency?

Matthew J. Martin: That’s correct. We– all the investments and the beneficiary side are in local currency so in Rupiah. We use Bitcoin as a vehicle to move money internationally very quickly and very capital efficiently. So, we can basically take an investment from an investor in the USA, move it overseas into Indonesia, deposit it into any Indonesian bank account in about two hours, two to four hours.

Andre Rishi: Wow.

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah.

Andre Rishi: Wow, that’s ridiculously fast, man.

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, and it costs us less and generally the cost for that is you know it’s below 2% which is a lot less than what you will be charged if you did a bank-to-bank transfer. It’s a lot less than if you did like Western Union.

Andre Rishi: Quite expensive, yeah.

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah.

Andre Rishi: Yeah. They do charge– I’ve experienced that myself and they charge crazy amounts for that. Now, what has the reception been like with utilizing bitcoin in Indonesia? Like the government, with the government specifically in banks.

Bitcoin Regulation in Indonesia

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, Indonesia, so, in terms of regulatory approach, Indonesia is generally what’s considered a bottom-up approach. So, Indonesia – whereas Malaysia which is a similar, you know, it’s a Muslim-dominated market.

Malaysia is very much a top-down model where the national bank or Bank Negara of Malaysia specifies criteria and then it sort of this top-down government model, whereas Indonesia is much more grassroots.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Matthew J. Martin: So, Indonesia’s guidelines so far in Bitcoin has been, we understand Bitcoin exists, it’s highly speculative, consumer should exert extreme caution when investing in this speculative new asset class.

That’s essentially been the regulatory approach so far from the Indonesian government. Obviously, all the other regulations apply but there’s nothing special about Bitcoin as far as the Indonesian government is concerned.

Andre Rishi: Ok. And I guess that the end users, who are funding their businesses, are they even aware that Bitcoin is in the background of this whole thing? Or probably not even?

Matthew J. Martin: No, not at all. Not at all.

Andre Rishi: Ok, all right. So, by chance you wouldn’t even– do you have any idea of what, what’s the– I guess the word on the street in regards to Bitcoin in Indonesia if people even really– what do people know about it over there? If they know anything at all

People’s Knowledge of Bitcoin in Indonesia 

Matthew J. Martin: It depends I mean it depends in what circles you travel, right? If you travel in you know tech circles, obviously, people are going to be aware of it. Among the middle class with disposable income who are maybe interested in highly speculative investments, there are probably some awareness.

But just to give you an idea in terms of how attitudes have changed, a little more over a year ago when I first went to Indonesia, I had a conversation with someone experienced in microfinance there and I mentioned Bitcoin is part of our you know out technology. And they said, “Oh Bitcoin, isn’t that a multilevel marketing scheme?”

So, complete, you know they just thought, oh, Bitcoin sounds like a scam or they thought it was some multilevel marketing. And then I was like, I was very confused, I was like, “Wait, how does multilevel marketing play in this, I don’t understand.”

But there are – Bitcoin Indonesia are for example which are for example which is our partner in Indonesia to serve us the payment side of what we do. They have been a fantastic local partner and they’re very reputable, very excellent customer service. So, the infrastructure is there in Indonesia to do things with Bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Easy to Buy Bitcoin in Indonesia

Matthew J. Martin: You can go to essentially the equivalent of 711 over there Indomaret and also Alfamart or Alfamidi. So, those are the two big Alfamidi and Indomaret are the two big corner stores which in most places you can find them all over the place.

So, you can go to those stores, you can make the cash payment and actually put money into Bitcoin, buy bitcoin using cash.

Andre Rishi: Get out of here.

Matthew J. Martin: You can also– I mean using bitcoin in Indonesia, you can – it’s pretty easy to move money in and out of an Indonesian bank account. So, the infrastructure is pretty developed I would say in terms of Indonesia.

But in terms of general awareness, it depends– it depends who you talk to. But yeah, I mean Indonesians are in general a very, especially in urban Indonesians are very tech-savvy, they’re used to using apps like GO-JEK which is essentially Uber for traditional scooter taxis. So, yeah, so I would say there’s certainly a growing awareness about Bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: Wow. Wow. That’s nice, man. And I guess at the same time too it must be good to definitely to some degree to like you said, be providing a service that is actually really is beneficial to humanity and to do so in a manner that is halal by and large.

Have you had to have any discussions with any Islamic scholars in regards to setting up your business especially since it is in finance and it is with bitcoin?

Matthew J. Martin: Yes, so I mean you always want to be having in dialog with scholars, right?

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Matthew J. Martin: The structure that we used– so again, we used bitcoin as a wire and we’re not originating contracts in bitcoin. Bitcoin is essentially just the tool we use. So, the sharia overlaps with Bitcoin in terms of what we’re doing. It does not really– there’s no sharia implication to the fact that we’re using bitcoin. It’s like– it’d be like using Western Union for us, right?

Andre Rishi: There are no contracts.

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, there’s no contracts stipulated in bitcoin. We’re not holding bitcoin balances. So, I mean yeah, there’s really nothing in terms of the sharia that overlaps with our use of bitcoin per se.

In terms of the sharia principles we invest using, our contract are quite clear so we use a mudarabah (sharing of profit and loss) agreement with our investors which is a profit-sharing arrangement. So, our sort of model is a lot simpler than maybe some other models.

How to Invest in Blossom Finance

Andre Rishi: Right. Right. Now, what is somebody like let’s say, me, what if I wanted to invest, you know I wanted to put capital in, invest in there and see if you know insha’Allah maybe I can make some profit for myself by helping somebody out. How do you even go about that? How does that, how does somebody go about that?

Matthew J. Martin: So, yes, so we haven’t launched publicly, we’re still running the service privately. We intentionally have not opened this service for anyone to invest for a variety of reasons. So, today, you can’t do that. We…

Andre Rishi: Man!

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. So, Blossom, based– the way we’re structured. We only allow credited investors. So, to invest using Blossom platform, you have to either have income in excess of 200,000 per year or assets exceeding 1 Million not including your primary residence.

And that’s basically because of US Securities and Exchange Commission regulations that stipulate that based on the way we structure things that’s the way things are right now. So, if we did open things up publicly which we will, we plan to in the future. We haven’t announced a target launch date yet but when we do, it will be for accredited only investors.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: So, we hope to expand that in the future, Insha’Allah but as of now, there are no plans to go beyond accredited investors.

Andre Rishi: Insha’Allah

Matthew J. Martin: Within the US.

Andre Rishi: Within the US?

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah.

Andre Rishi: I think you definitely would have a lot of Muslims in the United States, in the Western hemisphere that would love to be able to invest in a business like this, in a project like this for sure, for sure.

Matthew J. Martin: Yes.

Andre Rishi: Now, aside from…

Matthew J. Martin: And to be clear, we don’t position ourselves as a Muslim platform. We’re very focused on maximizing the amount of capital that we can bring to create businesses.

So, you know our messaging is around ethical finance more so than sharia finance, right? Our principles are– our principles and our products are 100% sharia but you know we believe that the strong ethical component to what we do is attracted not just to Muslims but to a broader audience.

Andre Rishi: I agree. And since you know, Islam is a universal religion, it applies to all. So, I mean that’s…

Matthew J. Martin: That’s right.

Andre Rishi: …an extremely wise business move. Now, aside from everything, the legalities of the regulatory system on the Indonesian side, what have you been dealing with? What is Blossom been dealing with here States side in regards to regulations, has it been a challenge? Has it been easy? Has it been getting easier, harder, what are you experiencing especially since you’re dealing with Bitcoin?

Matthew J. Martin: So, specifically related to Bitcoin, again because we’re not selling, so because we’re not selling or trading in bitcoin, it’s not really– like we’re not a service provider that’s…

Andre Rishi: I see what you mean.

Matthew J. Martin: …providing service rate.

Andre Rishi: It’s not storing, you’re not storing. You’re not holding…

Matthew J. Martin: We’re not storing it. We’re not selling it. We’re– the key regulations for us following their securities regulations so that’s somewhat difficult and expensive to navigate that landscape.

But so you know broadly for companies doing crowdfunding, you can consider what we do is a type of crowdfunding, right? Crowdfunding recently got a lot easier because of the 2013 Jobs Act that was put into place, I believe it was 2013. The Jobs Act is like a jumpstarting Our blah blah blah you know some acronym.

There was a crowdfunding provision in there that’s designed to make doing crowdfunding for businesses a lot easier. So, it carved out specific exemptions for sites that want to be crowdfunding sites to do things like equity crowdfunding or debt crowdfunding.

Unfortunately, those rules only apply for businesses organized in the United States. So, the fact that the entrepreneurs that we’re helping to start businesses are outside of the US, those rules completely don’t apply to us or make anything easier for us. And that’s why we only allow accredited investors.

Andre Rishi: And you found a good way to get around all that so that’s a…

Matthew J. Martin: No, it doesn’t apply to us, it does not.

Andre Rishi: Right. Right. Right. I was saying you found a good way to – when I say get around, I mean the way you set up your business, you don’t have to put with the hassles like a Coinbase does or anything like that.

Matthew J. Martin: Oh, oh you mean related to Bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: Yeah. Yeah, related exactly related to Bitcoin. You don’t have to worry about those things and again, I guess the primary reason being is because you don’t, you’re not storing it. You’re not storing it and you’re – I can see not selling, you’re not selling it per se. You’re using it as a…

Blossom Finance Uses Bitcoin Under the Hood

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, we’re not– again, Bitcoin for us is essentially a payment mechanism under the wire.

Andre Rishi: Right, right.

Matthew J. Martin: So, consumers on either side of the product don’t interact with Bitcoin. We don’t offer any products, any Bitcoin related products. Bitcoin is it’s the same is like, if you have a bank account and you sent money to someone else using your bank, the fact that there’s what’s called ACH under the hood, you’re not buying some product related to ACH, your bank is using an underlying technology to move money.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: Similar to you know if you use– send money via Western Union or something like that. The Bitcoin is a technology under the hood that helps us do what we do a lot more efficiently.

Andre Rishi: SubhanAllah very nice then. Now, you guys are you still by yourself or you partnered up? Or it’s still…

Matthew J. Martin: What do you mean by partnered up?

Andre Rishi: You said because Blossom I believed you founded all on your own, right? You mean it’s yours.

Matthew J. Martin: That’s right. I’m the sole founder. I would say I’m the only person that’s full-time. We do have a small team mostly based in Indonesia.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: But I’m the only full-time member technically on the books.

Future Plans for Blossom Finance

Andre Rishi: Ok. [Laughter] All right. And you know, so what’s the dream plan? You guys are looking to expand Insha’Allah beyond Indonesia? Or is your focus probably for the next two, three years, just to scale up in Indonesia itself or any countries?

Matthew J. Martin: Yes. It’s really the latter. So, Indonesia is a very big country. There’s a lot of opportunity there and I really believe with start-ups, the most important thing is to stay focused and not to get distracted.

So, Indonesia has 250 Million people. 80% of them lack access to traditional financial services. So, there’s several hundred million people left to help. Therefore I have been thinking about going to a new market.

Andre Rishi: Right. Have you– maybe I’m jumping the gun here so, have you given any thoughts at all about you know microfinancing in the United States or whatever which in some I guess you can argue that maybe you can be hard to do that here just because of the economics thing is just way more expensive here.

So, I don’t know how microfinancing would work in the United States plus the regulatory issues and all that so.

Matthew J. Martin: Have I thought about it? So, sure I mean I have thought about it. I think yeah, I think it’s sort of a– it’s a different business to do that here. And it’s not one that we have any plans to get into.

Andre Rishi: Right. Right.

Matthew J. Martin: It’s also just not I mean small business owners can go to a bank and take a loan. And if they’re not Muslim like why would they not do that? Right?

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Matthew J. Martin: There’s only like what? Three and a half million Muslims in the US even if let’s say half of them are small business owners, that’s not a big enough population to build a viable business on in terms of what we do.

And it’s not expensive to set up that type of operation here regulatory compliance and legal things and frameworks you need to have in place. So, it just is a big upfront capital investment with not– with something that you couldn’t scale very big just because of a limited, the limited need of demand for that type of service.

So, that’s why at least in the foreseeable future, we would never, never build that here. Actually originally, when I started Blossom, I had the idea to start in the US and I realized very quickly based on research that the opportunity here is just way, way too small. It’s just not enough people. And yeah, and yeah so.

Andre Rishi: Ok, not bad, not bad. I hear that. Now, let me ask you this. With your background being in the coding, and you discovering Bitcoin now the technology behind…

Matthew J. Martin: Like I said, discover Bitcoin. It sounds like– it sounds like Christopher Columbus discovering America. [Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Or when you, I guess when you met Bitcoin, you and Bitcoin met up.

Matthew J. Martin: Yes.

Bitcoin’s Ethical Compliance with the Sharia

Andre Rishi: Right? What are your thoughts in regards to the technology behind Bitcoin? And how that can be a benefit to either Muslims, how we can apply that with our own community or humanity at large.

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah. That’s a broad question.

Andre Rishi: And maybe– and maybe to say real quick, even the latter part of that questions humanity at large, you’re already implementing Bitcoin Blossom with the technology of that but I guess again, with the technology of Bitcoin, I’m sorry, the Blockchain technology behind it, how do you see that is being a benefit to Muslims?

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, Muslims and the greater society. Yeah, so I’ll touch on two things. So, the first thing is, is openness. So, I really believe the part of the reason, so the internet existed for quite a while before things like AOL and Netscape and et cetera became large.

The internet started out as a private network of network government systems, universities, and metro libraries linked up. And it was a private network, right?

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: To the extent that the internet became a public network where anyone can join this network of servers. That’s really where the internet’s power came in terms of it being an open network.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Matthew J. Martin: Bitcoin is an open network. Traditional financial services are a closed network. That means you have to be part of the club to join up.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: So, part of the game-changing power of Bitcoin, I would say is first that it has the potential for greater financial inclusion. Because it’s an open network, anyone with a $50 laptop can join this financial network and start moving money through the system. That’s powerful. That is absolutely game-changing. So, the fact that it’s an open network I think that has transformative power.

The second thing you know you mentioned Blockchain so I’ll touch on that. The second thing I would say is the cryptographic ledger system is another, is game-changing on many levels. So, from a sharia perspective, the money we use today is completely haram. It’s impermissible by any stretch of the scholarly imagination.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: And there’s a lot of people asked, is Bitcoin halal or haram? Which I think is the wrong question because no one asked first like everyone– no one is asking the question why are we using haram money?

Why are Muslim countries still issuing haram money? Why aren’t they issuing halal money? Which scholars agree as halal? Why are they doing the same thing Western governments do, in issuing nonconvertible fiat money? That doesn’t make any sense.

At the worst, Bitcoin is– eliminates the haram that you find with usurious bases money. Where there’s riba inherent in the system. So, I’m getting off-topic, I’m touching on some things…

Andre Rishi: No, no, no. Go for it, man.

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, I’m touching on something entirely different. So, you know a key principle in the fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence/understanding) of money is hand to hand. You can only sell gold or silver or things that qualify as money that you actually have.

You can’t– you can’t sell something– in general, you can’t sell something you don’t already have. But that’s not really the way the world’s financial systems work. They work on margin and they work on fractional reserve.

With Bitcoin, to transfer value in a Bitcoin system, and I’m not talking about derivative system you could build on top of it but the essential system of Bitcoin, you have to have ownership over the bitcoin to transfer that value.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: So, Bitcoin offers 100% mathematical certainty of the ownership of the underlying assets. So, ownership of the underlying assets is a key component of the sharia, in terms of sharia of money in business.

So, that’s good. That’s a very good thing. And I think from a broader ethical perspective, that can help reduce some of the over-leveraging that the world saw that cause things like the 2008 financial crisis.

So, and then Blockchain and so it actually ended up being three things. So, related to Blockchain, so again going back to that proof of ownership. I think Blockchain kind of going out of tangent here, Blockchain in Muslim majority markets like Indonesia. Malaysia, GCC countries, North Africa.

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Using Blockchain to Fight Corruption

Matthew J. Martin: Blockchain has the potential to be used in a public sector to fight corruption. So, a lot of those places or jurisdictions where, you know, everyone talks about corruption.

Well, using Blockchain technologies, you can move a lot of public sector things into the Blockchain and you eliminate, at every level, you eliminate the possibility for corruption or for someone to be taking money out of the system to grease palms which is really powerful.

And do things a lot more efficiently. So, I think that’s a really interesting implication for Bitcoin. And not just in– I think it definitely applies to Muslim majority countries but also certainly non-Muslim majority countries.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: …all over the world especially in the emerging economies. So, I think in the same way, mobile phones in many places in Africa leapfrogged landlines that those people went there were no landlines, people went directly to using mobile phones.

In the same way that in places in Africa the– and they had no commercial banks, no retail banks. They went directly to mobile money, right?

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: They completely leapfrogged commercial banking. I think in some emerging economies, Blockchain power public sector technology, Blockchain power, what’s called, Blockchain-backed government has the potential to leapfrog a lot of those conventional bureaucracies and institutions that we see in more developed economies.

So, I see that as a great potential benefit to society because we all want a public sector that is more efficient and that is less corrupt. I don’t think– unless you benefit from corruption. The only people who would want that are the people who benefit from the corruption.

Andre Rishi: Right. If you’re a member of the cartel, right?

Matthew J. Martin: That’s right. And there was not too long ago, so I think maybe four months ago, three months ago there was a big scandal in Malaysia where it turned out there was this mysterious payment, this out payment of at least US $4 Million.

But I think it was more like 40, they haven’t figured, they don’t even know how much money it was but it was at least $4 Million that just mysteriously went out, just from the government and it’s like you know it went into someone’s pocket.

And that’s the stuff that happens all the time in emerging economies and certainly the US too. But that’s more– corruption here is much more high level, much more high scale, and much more…

Andre Rishi: And I shouldn’t…

Matthew J. Martin: …it’s on a totally different scale. It’s a totally different scale. So, I think Blockchain just to summarize, Blockchain has the power to make the public sector a lot more efficient and eliminate corruption from that system. And the first point that I want to reiterate is inclusion, it’s– it has the power to make things more inclusive where anyone can join up to the system with the right access points.

The Potential of Bitcoin in Muslim Countries

Andre Rishi: Right. Now, have you been able to travel throughout the Muslim world at all? Whether it’s the GCC countries, Malaysia, I know you’ve mentioned it in this talk here. Have you been able to travel throughout the Muslim world?

And if so, since you’re you know from a tech background, keep your ears open, what do you hear that’s going on out there in regards to whether it be bitcoin itself being used or just the technology behind it?

Matthew J. Martin: Sure. So, I have traveled quite a bit in Southeast Asia, mostly Indonesia obviously, and then Malaysia, Singapore. In the GCC, I’ve been to the UAE and Bahrain. In North Africa, I’ve been to Morocco and the Middle East in general. I’ve been to Turkey.

Andre Rishi: You’re a man of the world.

Matthew J. Martin: Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mash’Allah. So, North Africa there’s an interesting opportunity there because there’s no– Morocco just announced that they have approved the first Islamic financial institutions to open up in Morocco. So, Morocco, I guess, depending– and this going to be controversial. But depending upon who you ask, there are probably 40 million people in Morocco.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: Or more like whoever– depends on who you talk to.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: Since it’s a sizable country, it’s 98% Muslim, at least 95% Muslim. And there are no Islamic banks. There’s no Islamic financial products. That’s shocking.

Andre Rishi: Hmm. That’s very shocking.

Matthew J. Martin: That’s absolutely shocking. They are just– they just now, less than a year ago approved the fact that they will allow Islamic banks to come into the country. So, they don’t even exist yet.

Andre Rishi: So, you mean like right now, Western-style banking is what’s there.

Matthew J. Martin: That’s the only thing you can do in Morocco is Western-style banking.

Andre Rishi: Subhan Allah.

Matthew J. Martin: Completely conventional banking. There are not even any institutions in Morocco that exist as name only Islamic banks.

Andre Rishi: Wow!

Matthew J. Martin: So, 100% conventional in Morocco.

Andre Rishi: Wow. Wow.

Matthew J. Martin: Moreover, Moroccans, the average Moroccan, because banking and so and there are some cartel aspects to that because you know Morocco is a monarchy and the king has a hand in approving all banks that come into the country and has a stake in the banks.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: So, there’s a lack of– it’s not easy for new players to come into that market to compete.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: The average Moroccan does not have access to a debit card so they can’t buy products online. It’s very difficult to buy products online. So, e-commerce is incredibly underdeveloped in Morocco, in the rest of North Africa as well for that reason. That’s an interesting opportunity. Digital currencies like bitcoin and others could play an exciting role.

In terms of Bitcoin, in other places, so there’s a general, I think interest in Southeast Asia around Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And a lot of these sort of banking conferences it’s always a topic, they always have at least one panel where you know we’re talking about Bitcoin or Blockchain but it’s still at a phase where banks are kind of looking at like scratching and they’re like, “Hmmm? What can we do that?”

Andre Rishi: Right.

Matthew J. Martin: They understand it’s going to be big but they don’t really know what to do with it. So, it’s definitely a topic of interest I would say. In the GCC…

Andre Rishi: That’s what I’m interested in there. I’ve gone back and forth from UAE, quite a bit actually.

Matthew J. Martin: Ok. Yeah, the GCC, I don’t know to be honest. My perception is that– like for example, I don’t even know, off the top of my head what the– who the Bitcoin player is in the UAE. What’s the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the UAE, I have no idea.

Andre Rishi: Right. I think it’s an Australian company called iGot or something like that I think, I don’t know.

Matthew J. Martin: Ok. So, yeah, so I don’t even know. So, you know I think and this is not a knock on the GCC but my perception is those countries will look outside for the trend and they’ll embrace cryptocurrency as it trends elsewhere.

That’s my perception but I could be wrong with that. In Turkey, honestly, I have no idea but I do know that some good strides are being made in terms of sharia-compliant banking financial products in Turkey.

Turkish Bank this last year at the Global Summit, the World Islamic Banking Conference, I forget the name, Turkish Bank won the award for Best Overall Islamic bank. So, Turkey is making great strides.

Andre Rishi: Ok, all right. And so, I was going to ask like two things. One I was going to you know come back and ask, since you, as a Muslim, starting Blossom and your knowledge of cryptocurrencies, have you crossed paths with scholars who maybe will ask you questions in regard to it?

You know seeking knowledge so that they themselves can utilize that to help other Muslims who are interested in the topic?

Matthew J. Martin: Yeah, unfortunately, I haven’t. I just don’t think it’s on the radar of enough scholars, yeah. But insha’Allah that will change in the future.

Andre Rishi: insha’Allah. insha’Allah. Well, that sounds really good man. Really good. So, what are the plans? Are you working on anything outside of Blossom? Any other startups in mind or especially when it comes to digital currency arena, cryptocurrency?

Matthew J. Martin: If there are I’m not discussing them.

Andre Rishi: Ahh man, I couldn’t get that out of you. All right. Well, I definitely wanted to thank you. You’ve given us a lot of info. If we wanted to find you, where– what’s the best way to get in contact with you? What’s the best way to find out Blossom?

How to Contact Matthew and Blossom Finance

Matthew J. Martin: So, obviously the two best ways I’m on Twitter @ohbytheway that’s O-H-B-Y-T-H-E-W-A-Y, ohbytheway just like it sounds.

Andre Rishi: ohbytheway, Ok.

Matthew J. Martin: ohbytheway. You can catch me on Twitter there. Also, you can email me at matthew@blossomfinance.com

Andre Rishi: Awesome. Awesome. And again, I wanted to thank you for coming on the show and supporting the cause. Really we’re looking to make this podcast a benefit to humanity, you know really have this podcast where Muslims can come together with this technology to see how we can utilize the technology for the betterment of humanity. I think Blossom is you know is right up that alley man, so God bless you. You know, I’m just like pray that you continue to have success in your business that it blossoms.

Matthew J. Martin: Insha’Allah.

Andre Rishi: Blossoms, right? Love the idea of it. And blossoms even beyond Indonesia when the time is right Insha’Allah.

Matthew J. Martin: Insha’Allah.

Andre Rishi: I would definitely put information on the– your contact in the show notes here. And I just wanted to remind all the users, please don’t forget to you know signup for our mailing list. We always want to make sure we can keep you up-to-date on everything that is going on here. Please donate. Support the cause, please share us on Facebook, Twitter, wherever you frequent. And again, Matthew, thank you so much for being on the show.

Matthew J. Martin: You’re welcome.

Andre Rishi: As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.

Matthew J. Martin: JazakAllah kheir, wa aleikum assalaam wa rahmatulah wa barikahtu.

Andre Rishi: Alhamdulillah.

PLEASE KINDLY SHARE THIS ARTICLE IF YOU’VE FOUND BENEFIT IN IT

Please join me today as I have a conversation with Suraya Zainudin to discuss Bitcoin in Malaysia and the following:

Suraya’s websites and contact information:
Suraya’s blog – Ringgit Oh Ringgit
Check out her excellent articles on Bitcoin at CoinGecko
Please contact Suraya for business inquires at: surayazainudin@gmail.com
Twitter: ​@surayaror

Video Transcript

Suraya’s Background and How She Learned About Bitcoin

Andre Rishi: Today on the Islam and Bitcoin Podcast, we have a special young lady from Malaysia joining us on the show, her name is Suraya Zainudin.

Suraya Zainudin: Suraya, yes, yes.

Andre Rishi: Did I say it correct?

Suraya Zainudin: Suraya Zainudin, in local accent.

Andre Rishi: Oh, OK. Masha Allah, I like that, I like that. I want to make sure I say your name right, like brother that is not my name. OK great [Laughter]. Well like I said Suraya, Suraya is joining us from Malaysia and she’s– what we’re going to do today is just have a, just a conversation with her.

She’s actually involved in the Bitcoin space, Bitcoin community out there in Malaysia. We’re just going to learn a little bit about her, and also see how Bitcoin came into her life and how she is involved with Bitcoin and particularly, Bitcoin and Islam. So Suraya, again, welcome to the show.

Suraya Zainudin: Thank you, Andre for having me and hello listeners of Bitcoin and Islam Podcast. I’m very happy to be here. What, your question is about how I got involved in the space and I– I’m very new. I’ve just been in the Bitcoin space since Christmas last year.

I just remembered reading about it from Reddit and just thinking to myself, “Oh bitcoin sounds like a pretty good investment”, and my interest has always been in personal finance and I hold gold before, and I’ve hold some other currencies before. I’m just thinking to myself, this is what I’m reading into and I did, and somehow I fell in love with it.

If you’re going to spend that much, you might as well purchase Bitcoin outright. I have had more success, I have And yeah, there’s not much information about Bitcoin and Islam so I started reading more about it and looking up studies about it and I thought, “OK, so it’s fairly compatible so I’m going to try and hold some”. And here I am.

Andre Rishi: Ok, Masha’Allah, alhumdulilah, very nice. So, let me, I’m going to back up a little bit. I know you said that you, you know found out about Bitcoin last year on Reddit. So, just so the audience can know a little bit about you. You said something about your background is in finance. Now what were you doing, what type of work do you do?

Suraya Zainudin: Before this I was actually very much involved, very active in the activism space. I worked in a few NGOs. I’ve experience in women’s rights organizations. I’ve done work for International Labor Organization. And my background is actually, I’m a major in communications. I have a Master’s in Corporate Communications.

So all of this while finance is just something like a side hobby of mine. And I’ve always been interested in it and it’s just something that I read up on and the finance space in Malaysia is pretty small. Not many people like to talk about it on finances so I just started to talk about it. And based on that, I started writing on my blog about finance. And that’s how I started writing about bitcoin as my choice of investment and somehow people started to contact me to know more about what I thought about it.

So, I was just thinking to myself, “Hey, so Malaysians don’t know much about Bitcoin so let’s, you know, talk a little bit more about it.” And that’s how pretty much my background in how I got into it. But my first and original love has always been, my work has always been, in activism.

Andre Rishi: Ok, Ok, Ok that’s really good. Wow, that’s really, really good. So, like you’re saying finance and activism as well, and looks like you were saying standing up for like women’s rights and then getting involved in Bitcoin

Muslims in Malaysia are Curious About Investing in Bitcoin

And one thing you said that really amazed me, and maybe I shouldn’t be amazed by it but you’re saying that you found like a lot of people in Malaysia didn’t really know about Bitcoin. And you know a lot of us here in the west, we definitely see Malaysia as a very progressive and innovative, forward-thinking society so you would, I guess, to me myself personally, I thought maybe even more people from Malaysia would be into Bitcoin but I have to remember that Bitcoin is still relatively new, relatively new.

Suraya Zainudin: You know, you’re right, let me rephrase that a little bit. Malaysians, in general, we have a friend is telling on what Bitcoin is but unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, a lot of Malaysians got into Bitcoin from a very you know, high-yield investment program referral. So they get into it from a very dodgy, from a very dodgy network.

So it’s just more of, hey you guys, like be careful. It’s a good investment yes, but if it promises you like too much, too fast, it’s pretty much a scam. And it’s you know it’s pretty much what you, you just hope that you can warn more people against scams so that they’re financially better.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm. And is this– is this what made you say to yourself, “You know what? Maybe I should start writing about this.” Is that one of the reasons that made you decide to blog about Bitcoin, to just make people aware because you saw all of this going around?

Suraya Zainudin: At first when I blog about it, it’s really for me. It’s a personal blog after all, but I’ve been contacted by people, who are just asking me, “Oh, hey sister, is this halal mode of investment? Is this a scam, so and so? Is this a scam, is this…”

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: “…a valid– is this like suitable under Islam?” So obviously that’s something that I am interested in as well. So I’ve written a couple of articles about it that you have seen, and that’s how you contacted me. Thank you but I…

Andre Rishi: I was just going to say I was one of those people who reached out and contacted you. [Laughter]

Suraya Zainudin: Yeah, and I mean, it’s the– what I’ve known so far is that yes it’s a good investment under Islam provided that people know the risks about it.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Suraya Zainudin: And yes, and as long as Muslims get into Bitcoin with a correct mindset you know, not into any lending high-interest schemes or any dodgy referrals, just in order to make, just have some profit at the expense of others then you are Ok to hold it under Islam.

But if you’re one of those people who want to cheat others of their bitcoins or wanted to steal from others then bitcoin is just like fiat money, it’s just like USD just like Ringgit in Malaysia. It’s just ultimately what your intention with it that makes you a good or bad holder of bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: Ok, all right. And when you’re saying again it’s more like fiat currency, I know bitcoin, I know I guess the technicalities, the difference between say, fiat and bitcoin is more like bitcoin is already, it’s a set amount that insha’Allah won’t increase and I guess the US dollar– the Ringgit I’m not sure how– I’m assuming it’s very similar to the US Dollar where it’s fiat that the government can just print as much of it as they like.

Suraya Zainudin: Correct, yes.

Muslim Malaysians Want to Know if Bitcoin is Halal in Islam

Andre Rishi: Now, with you doing research with Bitcoin, especially within the Muslim community, I have read a couple of your articles on Bitcoin as it relates to Islam and, Alhamdulillah, I have to say you’ve done a very, very good job. Insha’Allah…

Suraya Zainudin: Thank you.

Andre Rishi:  You’re so welcome. At some point during this conversation of the show, I will go ahead and, you know, make sure to put links to your articles and to your blog in the show notes of this podcast so our audience, they can go and check you out and who knows, you just might get some more calls from some people.

[Laughter]

Suraya Zainudin:  Well, I appreciate that, thank you.

Andre Rishi: No, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. Now when you got into Bitcoin back last year in December, did you have to or did you try to reach out to any Islamic scholars?

Suraya Zainudin:  I looked. I did a quick Google search. I found your website, actually.

Andre Rishi: Oh wow. [Laughter]

Suraya Zainudin: And then in fact I was going on– I’m less interested in fatwas and more interested in scholarly articles because I know the fatwas are Islamic opinions and they can differ very, very much. So I start looking to scholarly articles which led me to interview an emeritus professor in Islamic Finance.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: So, my sources are really academic-based. I will love to have more opinions from Muslim imams for example, but I’m having a, I’m having trouble to identify Muslims, imams who have also, have good financial background, if that make sense.

Andre Rishi: It does, it does. And yeah, and Malaysia definitely strikes me as a place that would have, I would assume, a good bit of scholars there since the population of Muslims there are so dense. There are so many Muslims there.

Suraya Zainudin: Yes, we’re one of the biggest Islamic financial hubs in the world. We have the world’s biggest or at least one of the biggest schools of Islamic finance. It’s quite– Islamic Finance is very, very progressive here and there’s a lot of demand for it especially from regions from Indonesia which is our neighbor, from all over the world basically.

Andre Rishi: Ok, and I guess like you said you know, your approach to finding out more about Bitcoin as it relates to Islam has been more on the academic end, speaking to professors and you haven’t also seen any articles by any, I guess any Muslim scholars.

I know you said you haven’t contacted any directly, but have you read any online from any of the Malaysian scholars at all, or is it just something that they’re not really talking about right now, it’s just very new?

Suraya Zainudin: There is a Malaysian fatwa about bitcoin, and they say that because of the element of speculation in bitcoin it is not suitable and there’s a lack of authoritative body. It’s not suitable to be used as currency simply for the, on the basis of user protection, there’s very much lack of protection. Let’s say for example somebody got scammed out of bitcoin, then there’s not much that they can do, so it’s mostly about that angle. But no fatwas that I’ve seen so far that at least says that bitcoin is impermissible.

Andre Rishi: Haram.

Suraya Zainudin:  Nothing yet.

Andre Rishi: Ok, so nothing…

Suraya Zainudin: And at the same time, they don’t call it haram yet so a lot of people, a lot of fatwas actually, I think if I recall correctly, there are two, they basically sit along the lines of, there’s lack of regulations, be careful. There can be element of extreme speculation, just be careful when you use it.

Andre Rishi: Ok. Ok. All right and again I know you said you got interested in Bitcoin because of looking at it as an investment tool.

Suraya Zainudin: Mm-hmm.

What I Like About Bitcoin as an Investment

Andre Rishi: And I guess you’re background being in finance, you’ve always been interested in investing. What about Bitcoin you know really peaked your interest?

Suraya Zainudin:  I like that fact that it’s digital. I like the fact that I can access it anywhere in the world and there’s less chance of it being, if I maintain a good digital security then there’s less chances that people will steal me out of my bitcoins.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: I like the fact that it has intrinsic value and which is one of the elements of what makes a currency valuable in the first place and what that is, one of the elements that is considered as currency under Islam itself. So, that elements I really like.

But aside from it, I just really like the community, the Malaysian Bitcoin community is great because they’re really helpful. They were you know, they’re really welcoming to newbies and make you know just basically, be careful. There are scammers around, they share contacts of people who scams and make that Bitcoin list that puts all of the Ponzi schemes in one place and like…

Andre Rishi: Oh wow, Ok.

Suraya Zainudin:  So actually, for these types of investments and focus on these instead. They gave me a lot of tips on like how to keep my bitcoin safe. And I got my password manager installed because of them, my digital security is now insha’Allah, top-notch. [Laughter] I hope so, I hope so.

Andre Rishi: [Laughter] Insha’Allah, insha’Allah.

Suraya Zainudin: So I like that I can control all of these things and like I mentioned before, I’ve hold gold before and I just, it just got me confused like, “Why do I hold, a physical gold is better but what if I lose it? And to try just hold it in bank? But like, that’s not, that’s not, like I don’t have proof. That’s not intrinsic value.” So even gold which is essentially halal makes me question about it. So that is why I was looking to other elements as well.

Andre Rishi: Ok and wow it sounds like the community there is really good. Is– how big is the Bitcoin community there in Malaysia?

Suraya Zainudin:  I don’t have a number, I don’t have a number but we do have a pretty big Telegram chat group and I would say, all in all, there’s roughly about at least a thousand of us.

Andre Rishi: Oh wow, that’s a good bit I think.

Suraya Zainudin: [Laughter]Multiple Facebook pages, we have some pages that’s like about 5,000. I admin in one of the Facebook pages as well and it has about a thousand plus people, just roughly a few thousand at least, I don’t have a number for you.

Andre Rishi: No, that’s very good. It’s so funny you say that because I was actually looking to reach out to one of those Bitcoin groups from Malaysia on Facebook to have you know, bring them on the show. I might have reached out to you again, right?

[Laughter]

Suraya Zainudin: But yeah, they’re very friendly and some of us, some of them are miners, some of them are holders, some of them conduct business in bitcoin and started to accept bitcoin as payment, so there’s just many types of us.

The Malaysian Bitcoin Community

Andre Rishi: And do you know about the time when the Bitcoin community started to form in Malaysia?

Suraya Zainudin: I don’t know. I myself am pretty new.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Suraya Zainudin: However, the main, there’s a page called, there’s a website called bitcoinmalaysia.com

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Suraya Zainudin: And that I believe is the longest running resource for Bitcoin in Malaysia. I think that was up since 2012, 2013, something about, somewhere around that time, I might be wrong on the actual year but it’s been around for a couple of years.

Andre Rishi: Ok and these communities, do they actually have like a meet-up times when people could actually, physically come together, face to face and they had meetings and discuss Bitcoin?

Suraya Zainudin: Sometimes they meet up, yes. I’ve seen pictures, I’ve seen evidence. I haven’t joined yet. I haven’t joined any of them yet. I will, I keep promising them that I will. So I will do that soon, but yes, they have posted pictures of them meeting up in various cities around Malaysia as one in Kuching, there was a couple in Kuala Lumpur. So there are some events going on.

Andre Rishi: Ok and you said that they’ve really helped you out a lot. So I’d take it that they’re very big on education. So what are the things, let’s say I was to contact, you know, one of these Bitcoin communities or groups in Malaysia, what would they be able to help the average person with who is new to Bitcoin?

Suraya Zainudin: Ok, I’ll just say, Ok, say for example if you’re new and you just joined the Telegram group and as soon as you join, you are welcomed by the group. You’re given a list of like house rules you know, like don’t promote referrals, and don’t sell to unverified members and stuff like that.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: You’re also given a guide to like to help you answer and to help them answer basic questions about Bitcoin. What is it? For Muslims, is it Halal? Which is something they always want to know. What are the credible exchanges that they can use in order to purchase bitcoin in Malaysia? Can they still mine? These are all basic like newbie questions.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: And we give them all of this information before they first get started and everything else, we just sort of like learn on the way. There’s a lot more things that I don’t know, I’m very stupid about mining, I have no idea what it is or how it works. I just know it is something that people in China do that’s it. I know that it’s hot and noisy pretty much.

Andre Rishi: Yes, yes.

[Laughter]

Suraya Zainudin: I’ve heard. I haven’t seen. I don’t know how the machine looks like. I don’t know how much machine costs. But we look at each other as much as we can.

Andre Rishi: Yeah, I know, for me back when I started, when I found out about Bitcoin was in 2012 but I didn’t…

Suraya Zainudin: Wow

Andre Rishi: Yeah. But, but, but I didn’t really fully get it at that time so I didn’t revisit it again for like another two years so until 2014. And I think– and I have to go back and look but I think at that time, the price of bitcoin must have been, I think if it was more than $30 or $50 that would have been really, really high. And then when I really found out about Bitcoin it was like 300 [dollars] something so I was like, “Oh!” [Laughter] I was like I guess I should have like really looked at it closer back then you know. But you know like…

Suraya Zainudin:  Don’t look back, don’t look back.

Andre Rishi: I know, I know, just look forward. Look forward. [Laughter] I’m glad…

Suraya Zainudin: Look forward. [Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Exactly, glad that we’re here right now. But like you said, I looked into some things too like mining and things like that, and in 2012 I would say that, that was I thought about mining myself but exactly like you said, you know that you’re dealing with a lot of computers, you’re going to be sweating a lot in your home, you’re going to be running up your electric bill. If you’re married, your wife is going to be yelling at you to get rid of that. [Laughter]

Suraya Zainudin: Something like that, something like that, yeah.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Suraya Zainudin: And Malaysia’s a tropical country you know and I’m just thinking like, “Wow! Your air-conditioning bill is going to be humongous.”

Andre Rishi: Yes. [Laughter] Yes, yes, yes. And where I’m at in California today is actually, we’re going through a heat wave. We do, we measure our temperature in Fahrenheit not in Celsius. But out here today, I think it’s 105 degrees. It’s really hot. So even trying to do mining in someone’s home, if you don’t have any A/C and right now I don’t have any A/C in my home, it makes it very, very, very hot.

And like I was saying, back in 2012 even to start mining right then, it was a little hard for I think the individual to mine because buying the products to mine, the hashing power I think, it needed to be so high that it became difficult for an individual to mine. Do you know if they have any mining groups in Malaysia?

Suraya Zainudin: I don’t know. I don’t know if they have their own groups, I don’t know about it. I think they have some sort of support system going on, but it’s outside of my knowledge.

Andre Rishi: Ok, all right. And when it comes to, let’s say I know you said you’re new to it, what about your friends? You have any friends that had been interested in Bitcoin?

Suraya Zainudin: None. Only based on personal conversations, I’ve made friends from Bitcoin but it just never cropped up before, before I start getting interested in it. Maybe it’s one of those things that you don’t notice until you do.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Suraya Zainudin:  Maybe I’ve had a conversation about it before, I just can’t remember but I’ve definitely made a lot more friends since I got into the Bitcoin community. And exactly for the reasons I’ve just described, they’re very friendly and very welcoming to newbies, and very much into safe investing with bitcoin rather than getting rich quick and like scamming people here and there.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm. And you know, you’re a very– you yourself are very open and positive and friendly person so I can see them being friendly to you would be very, very easy so Alhamdulillah for that, Alhamdulillah. Now, what about say family, have you, do you talk to your family at all about Bitcoin? Are they interested or are they like, I have no idea what she is doing with this digital stuff.

[Laughter]

Suraya Zainudin: Something like that, I talk about Bitcoin to my dad.

Andre Rishi: Yeah

Suraya Zainudin: And he was like, “Is this some American conspiracy that I should know about?” And I’m like, “No dad.” But he- well during that time, like Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity was still not known, so he was like, “Who is this person who created it? Is he part of some- or is this like new world other group that’s aimed to collapse world economies?” And I’m like, “I don’t know dad, but good point, I’ll find out.” And we just kind of stopped talking about it. I think he prefers his cash. He’s traditional so I think he prefers less digital versions of money in the first place.

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Suraya Zainudin: But yeah, I’ll keep trying and try to convince him that it’s not as sinister as he thought. But pretty much, it’s interesting feedback so far from families. Some warned me about it, some just you know, got right head on into the whole conspiracy theory.

Andre Rishi: Right, right. My family, I know some of my family, they are skeptical about it. They don’t, some of them at all they’re not interested they think it’s a scam. They think it’s a scam. And you know, I even say to myself, I said, “You know, I don’t know if Bitcoin is here to stay or it will die off, Allahu Alam, Allah knows best.” But from what I do see right now, it does seem like it fits a lot of the rules of what Islam says money should be.

Like it doesn’t oppress people, it’s not based on fractional reserve, you can’t just counterfeit it and make a bunch more and flip the marketplace with it, it’s mined so you don’t have a rush of bitcoin hitting the marketplace, a bitcoin in Malaysia is a bit- the same as a bitcoin in the United States, which is the same as a bitcoin in Australia, which is the same as a bitcoin in Africa. It’s just the same. No one person controls it and I like that very, very much.

Suraya Zainudin: Likewise, good point, that’s exactly why I really, really like this currency.

The Malaysian Government and Bitcoin

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm. Now, have you seen anything on the government side of Malaysia in regards to how they are interacting with Bitcoin?

Suraya Zainudin:  They warn people, in the Malaysian government at least, they warn people based on the– again, based on the like you know, there are risks involved, there are no regulatory bodies, please be careful, but they don’t ban it at least in Malaysia.

Having said that, the Malaysian government is getting more and more into FinTech so we’re all you know, fingers-crossed, they will hopefully have something a little bit more positive about Bitcoin soon but nothing in, nothing complete yet.

Andre Rishi: Ok and speaking of FinTech, as a writer and you are like this Bitcoin journalist, you’re more than just a Bitcoin journalist; you’re an investigator out there. You’re a great writer by the way. Are you beginning to see a lot of FinTech, finance technology companies popping up that’s– are around Bitcoin in Malaysia?

Suraya Zainudin:  FinTech around Bitcoin in Malaysia. No, actually I don’t. FinTech in Malaysia is fairly very, very new.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: There’s not a lot. I am not so active in the FinTech community in Malaysia but as I understand it, it’s a lot more for, tech forums to, for people to sign on with insurance, to sign on with credit cards or loans. I believe there are a few people, smaller groups out there that are interested to make some sort of like investment platforms using mobile apps.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: But I have not heard any updates. Maybe they’re still developing I don’t know what’s the update on that. But none so far that specifically links Bitcoin FinTech in Malaysia. I think they are– there were at least some people who try to make bitcoin purchases more accessible.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: But that’s yeah, that’s pretty much my knowledge about the scene right now.

Andre Rishi: That’s Ok.

Suraya Zainudin: On this subject.

Andre Rishi: Ok yeah and again, it just seems like you know, Bitcoin is still in 2016, very new, very new.

Suraya Zainudin: It’s less than 10 years old.

Andre Rishi: Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. And I guess also you’re not, I guess you’re not finding a lot of bloggers or anyone who’s doing research like yourself and writing about Bitcoin. Are you pretty much the main person out of Malaysia right now who is writing about Bitcoin?

Suraya Zainudin: I wouldn’t say that, I’m sure there are other people like me. Maybe I just haven’t found them yet. I hope there’s other people like me so if you’re listening please contact me. [Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Definitely.

Where to Find Suraya Online

Suraya Zainudin: I’m using your platform for selfish means.

Andre Rishi: That, no please, it’s not, it’s not. So please, while we’re talking about your platform, what is your website and where can we find you online?

Suraya Zainudin:  My website is called ringgitohringgit.com, and it’s basically a personal blog where I write about my investments and my financial journey in Malaysia pretty much and it includes, beyond Bitcoin it also includes like how I save money, how I spend my money and stuff like that, my travels. So it’s a very personal blog. I write for a few online media platforms including CoinGecko which is one of the places the Bitcoin article, Bitcoin Islam article was posted.

Andre Rishi: That’s where I saw you.

Suraya Zainudin: So I write for them as well. Yes, I write for them as well and a bunch of other media platforms I can provide you a link, I’ll send link to some of my other writings I’m on Hongkiat as well, that’s H-O-N-G-K-I-A-T dot com and they are starting to want me to write more and more about digital currencies as well, so that’s good.

But otherwise, I’m on twitter, my username is @surayaror, that’s S-U-R-A-Y-A-R-O-R. I’m on Facebook but I don’t really– I try not to be active too much on Facebook because it sucks too much time and I can get carried away. [Laughter] I know that’s a big weakness of mine but I try, I try hard.

Andre Rishi: Ok and it sounds like you’re so busy every place else that, again your time is precious and yeah Facebook can definitely swallow up a lot of time, it really can, it really can.

Suraya Zainudin: It’s a lot of fun, I wouldn’t lie. It’s a lot of fun, Facebook, but it’s just you know, you have to do things. [Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, what is it, I know you, again, you’ve mentioned that you write for a couple of different blogs and you, and again we will put those links in the show notes so the audience can find you and insha’Allah you know this, you know Islam and Bitcoin, this website and this Podcast can really help to spread more awareness of who you are.

I mean part of the goal of this website is to really help bring to light a lot of Muslims and non-Muslims who are involved in Bitcoin. Specifically, I would love if [there is] more [knowledge of] Bitcoin within the Muslim community but just to be able to make the world more aware of them. And I would love for more people to be aware of you and your work.

Suraya Zainudin: Thank you.

Suraya’s Passion for Activism and Financial Knowledge

Andre Rishi: You’re so welcome. And when it comes to your writing, what– I know you write about Bitcoin and finance, is that your main passion of what you write about?

Suraya Zainudin: My main passion is activism so I used to write a lot about– I used to produce a lot of content on women’s rights. And I see now financial knowledge is a branch of activism as well. There are a lot of scams happening in Malaysia. If I’m not mistaken, I don’t have the data right now on my fingertips but Malaysians have lost millions of Ringgit to Ponzi scams, and just pyramid scams and I see scams as being complete family-destroyers. You know stealing from people is just against everything that we stand for.

You want money to help you and not to– money is just a tool to help you achieve whatever that it is that you want to do in life, not something that should depress you and lead you astray so to speak.

So, I see this as part of my activism as well. I’ve gotten a couple of people who contacted me and said, “Hey because of your blog I didn’t invest in this feared scam, so thank you for that.” And honestly makes me so happy because that’s right. That’s one more family that’s going to have more money for the education, more money for their groceries and it just, that makes me really, really happy.

Andre Rishi: Alhamdulillah. And you know, any good deed that, we know as Muslims, any good deed that we do in dunya will show up for us in al akhirah [the afterlife] so may Allah only multiply those good deeds for you and only bless you with the ability to do more good work and put an abundance of baraka [blessings] in your life. Ameen, so…

Suraya Zainudin: So, barakAllahu feek [may Allah’s blessings be upon you]

Andre Rishi: Yeah. I mean, so Alhamdulillah that’s really great. So, now are you working on anything right now or what are some of the, what are you focusing on right now in regards to maybe any upcoming articles you have in regards to Bitcoin?

Projects Suraya is Working on Now

Suraya Zainudin: Well, I am employed with Wirex App which is another FinTech start-up. It’s a hybrid financial platform and I am the content manager so I write a lot about Bitcoin on their blogs and on social media.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: But aside from that, I just want to maybe have an open appeal. I’m always looking for more angles about Bitcoin in Islam. I would love to find out the actual zakat calculation for bitcoin for example, and that’s something that if anyone of your listeners are listening out there and you have any idea of how I can even get started on how to calculate zakat with bitcoin, it would be great if you can contact me.

Just basically how it can be used for Muslims communities around the world, if you can help with translations so that more people know about the risks, if often be considered, just don’t get in because they hear somebody say that it can be a good investment.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Suraya Zainudin:  It is, it is undoubtedly a very high-risk investment and people should know that instead of saying, “It’s good.” They should say, “Oh it’s good but there are these risks, I understand these risks.” So that’s pretty much what I would love to focus on right now.

Andre Rishi: And if again, if anyone, [clearing throat] excuse me, if anyone out there is listening, by all means do reach out to our dearest sister and maybe you can collaborate with her with that information. I know for me, I do have a lot of people who email me and they do want to know about whether it’s halal or haram, or zakat. And what I really love about your articles is that the article that you have in CoinGecko, CoinGecko,

Suraya Zainudin: CoinGecko, yes.

[Laughter]

Andre Rishi: All right

Suraya Zainudin: Yeah, CoinGecko.

Andre Rishi: What’s the name of that article?

Suraya Zainudin: The name, I have it in front of me, it’s called Is Bitcoin Halal? What Scholars Say and Where It Stands in Islamic Banking and Finance, that’s the title of the article.

Andre Rishi: Ok, I would definitely link the article as well to the show notes of this Podcast. And also, what I was going to say, in reading over your articles, what I really like is that you address the good and the bad of Bitcoin, right?

So you don’t just say, “Oh Bitcoin is good you know da da da da, or XYZ. It’s so great.” but you actually take the time in your articles to address the positive and the negative. And for any of the, anyone out there, any of our audience members who are listening, what I love about Suraya’s approach is that she’s very balanced. You’re very, very balanced in your writing.

Suraya Zainudin: Thank you, I try to.

Andre Rishi: Hamdullilah. Now, do you also work as a consultant and give somebody, let’s say somebody wanted to hire you for consulting when it came to learn more about Bitcoin or maybe they wanted to implement it in their company, is that something that you would do?

Suraya Zainudin: Well, I do provide work for bitcoin and fiat as well. [Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Oh.

Suraya Zainudin: Thank you for asking me that question.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Suraya Zainudin: I do a lot of freelance writing, I also offer content management and content creation services, so if anybody wants to consult me on these services, I’m more than happy to assist you further.

Andre Rishi: All right, and like you said, you accept pay in bitcoin and fiat, right?

Suraya Zainudin: Yes.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Suraya Zainudin: I do.

Andre Rishi: OK, not bad at all. Not bad at all. So please do reach out to her and hire her for some writing. I think for me and we’ll talk about this probably later but, I may see about having you do something for the Islam and Bitcoin website, so you never know.

Suraya Zainudin: Let’s talk.

[Laughter]

Bitcoin Usage and Adoption in Malaysia

Andre Rishi: All right so what do you see for Bitcoin in Malaysia, is it steadily growing, you think?

Suraya Zainudin: I think it’s steadily growing. Since the six months, six or so months I’ve joined the Telegram group, it’s I think at first it was about 200 members and then it kind of ballooned to 800 now and…

Andre Rishi: Wow.

Suraya Zainudin: …increasingly growing. I think during the halving, there were a lot of new people joining up. And I think that, I mean if based on history from the past halving we see bitcoin price steadily went up and if insha’Allah, if it’s the same as this time around, if it’s going to steadily increase then we’ll probably going to see a lot more new people joining in as well. So we are expecting some more people, definitely.

Andre Rishi: Masha’Allah, that sounds really good. Now let me ask you, are you able to spend bitcoin at all in Malaysia, does any place accept it?

Suraya Zainudin: There are a couple of places. There are some restaurants, some services that allows you to pay your bills with bitcoin. I know the guy and I believe there are a couple of petrol stations that accept bitcoin transactions.

But it’s still very, very, very small and I think it’s about 10 or under 20, so it’s very small number. So what I do right now is use my bitcoin debit card, I have my Wirex card and that allows me to spend it anywhere I want. [Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Wow, you have a…

Suraya Zainudin: So that makes things a lot convenient.

Andre Rishi: Yeah, Ok so Masha’Allah this is really great, so you’re actually putting this to use. So not only are you holding bitcoin as an investment, but you’re actually using it yourself by spending it.

Suraya Zainudin: Yes.

Andre Rishi: SubhanAllah

Suraya Zainudin: I’ve heard some people was talking about like you know bitcoin is only as useful if you spend it and I was just thinking, Ok so I do want to make it more useful and well I get some of my pay in bitcoin so at some point I need to use those in my daily life and to pay for stuff, to pay for bills.

And one thing led to another and now I have a pretty good system going on where sometimes I sell my bitcoin, sometimes I pay for it directly, make transactions directly with bitcoin or use my bitcoin debit card. So it’s a good system so far.

Andre Rishi: And you find it relatively easy to do this, to pay bills, to buy services and products with the bitcoin?

Suraya Zainudin:  Whatever that I can’t but directly with bitcoin, I can use my bitcoin debit card so it’s quite convenient, yes.

Andre Rishi: Wow, Masha’Allah. So I guess you use the bitcoin debit card more than your wallet as we say in Bitcoin, digital wallet?

Suraya Zainudin:  I would– I use it about the same amount as I use my local bank account I would say.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Suraya Zainudin: Which is quite a lot.

[Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Wow, that’s really good. And how popular would you say the use of a bitcoin debit card is within the Malaysian community?

Suraya Zainudin: I would say that it’s quite popular because I’m employed with Wirex so I have some information. Malaysia is actually one of the biggest customers of Wirex, I think it’s about fourth place or five, fifth place in terms of global usage of plastic cards. So a lot of Malaysians are looking for bitcoin plastic cards in Malaysia to spend their bitcoins.

Andre Rishi: Oh wow, this is really good.

Suraya Zainudin: I don’t have the numbers, but at least about 10,000 minimum I would say.

Andre Rishi: That is really good. You know that’s something that I think would really help in regards to getting people to spend bitcoin and to use it within the marketplace so that insha’Allah you know more vendors will take it.

And I guess the way that bitcoin card, debit card works is when the, so maybe you can educate me on this. So when a merchant accepts the bitcoin debit card, they’re getting paid in fiat not actually bitcoin, is that right or is it actually bitcoin?

Suraya Zainudin: Well, in the case of– I mean there are different bitcoin debit card providers so I’m just kind of share what I know based on what I personally use.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Suraya Zainudin: In this particular account, my Wirex account it comes with a free bitcoin wallet, so I have bitcoin sitting there.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Suraya Zainudin: And if I want to pay for anything in bitcoin, then it’s just a very simple direct transfer. For everything else, I have a card, in USD and I can convert some of my bitcoins into USD and then use it to pay for whatever products or services that I want to purchase.

So, you’re right, the merchant gets it directly in fiat not bitcoin. And I mean it’s convenient. It’s a little bit– it depends on who you are, it’s because I do know that some people really don’t like the idea of bitcoin debit cards because they’re very pro let’s-go-bitcoin-transactions-all-the-way.

Andre Rishi: Ah, I see, yeah…

Suraya Zainudin: But for me, yeah, yeah, and this is especially popular on Reddit. Some people get really you know, they have really big opinions about this. But in countries like Malaysia, where there’s very few places to spend it, I find it a necessity, a very necessary tool in order to spend my bitcoins and like, if it helps me to spend my bitcoins, then why not?

Andre Rishi: Right, and it sounds like you’re saying it can be a very easy starting point or platform to start getting in to spending bitcoins, and ultimately insha’Allah we can get to a point where the transactions we make is from bitcoin to bitcoin, and not bitcoin to fiat.

Suraya Zainudin: Yes, yes. That’s what I’m aiming for, too.

Andre Rishi: Yeah, yeah. And I know we’ve been talking for a little while now, I would love to ask just some, a question about like Blockchain technology. Have you been doing any research on not just bitcoin as a currency, but the technology behind bitcoin, the Blockchain?

Suraya Zainudin: I have a little bit but on a very shallow level. This is something that I need to learn more Insha’Allah, something that I need to brush up on. I’m definitely interested to see how it works, on a very technical skill but I am not a coder, I have never been a coder. I wish I’m a coder, they seem like they make a lot of money. [Laughter]

Andre Rishi: I think so.

[Laughter]

Suraya Zainudin: But yes, I will learn more about it and then I can share more about it.

Conclusion and How to Contact Suraya

Andre Rishi: All right well, I will probably going to just wrap things up now. I know your time is precious, and you have work that you need to take care of for the day. But I definitely wanted to thank you for coming on the show and giving us a little insight into what is going on in the Bitcoin community in Malaysia.

We’re going to definitely put your websites in the show notes here. Are there any other websites that you would like us to know about that you’re active in or anything else that we should know about you before we wrap things up?

Suraya Zainudin: [Laughter] Well aside from my personal blog, I really like coingecko.com because it lists, well I write there [Laughter] and also it lists all of the other cryptocurrencies and we’re slowly, slowly getting into all these other interesting digital currencies and some of them are really amazing. I’m just slowly dabbling into that. Well, my company is Wirex, that’s W-I-R-E-X-A-P-P dot com and it’s a hybrid financial platform and it helps me to spend my bitcoins. And it’s, those two things pretty much.

Andre Rishi: Ok, all right. And what’s the best way to reach you?

Suraya Zainudin: The best way to reach me is via email. I prefer my emails, or tweet to me.

Andre Rishi: Well Ok, and what’s your email address?

Suraya Zainudin: surayazainudin@gmail.com. I’ll– you can put my email down in your links.

Andre Rishi: Ok very, very good. [Clears Throat] And again, excuse me, she’s an awesome writer so please do reach out to her and hire her and pay her in bitcoin, that’s the story, right? [Laughter] Pay her in bitcoin.

Suraya Zainudin: Thank you for that, Andre. I didn’t want to say that but thank you for saying it.

Andre Rishi: Yeah, we want bitcoin! [Laughter] That’s what we want. [Laughter] Well Ok, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show, insha’Allah sometime in the future I would love to have you back again as Bitcoin progresses in Malaysia and also as your writing progresses. I mean, I think again you’re doing some really good work and you’re reaching out to some good people and you have great information so I would love to have you back again on the show.

Suraya Zainudin: I would love to be here again. And thank you for having me, I really appreciate it. Thanks for contacting me.

Andre Rishi: Sure, you’re welcome. Well, that will wrap it up for today. So, again I just want to thank Ms. Suraya Zainudin, I hope I’m saying your name right.

[Laughter]

Suraya Zainudin: Close enough.

Andre Rishi: Ok, Ok. [Laughter] Ok and yes, so please do check out her websites, you can hire her for writing, pay her in bitcoin, she would love it tremendously. Please keep us here in your du’a [prayer], we will keep you, our dearest sister, we’ll keep you in our du’a. May Allah only give you success in this life and in the next As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh [may peace and blessings be upon you].

Suraya Zainudin: Waalaikumsalam [and may peace be upon you]. Thank you, Andre.

Andre Rishi: You’re welcome, Ma’salamah [goodbye].

Today my guest is none other than Roger Ver, aka “Bitcoin-Jesus”. Roger Ver is one of the most well-known members of the Bitcoin community and an avid educator of Bitcoin. Please join me as I interview one of Bitcoin’s most prominent advocates to learn, what is bitcoin? And more.

To save you some time, let’s quickly summarize Roger’s take on, what is bitcoin?

According to Roger Ver, bitcoin is a digital currency that is used on a decentralized ledger (blockchain) that allows the user to have complete control over their money outside of a banking system.

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. For a deeper understanding of Bitcoin, please watch the video below. You can use the menu in the video player to skip through sections of the video or read the full video transcript of the interview which is below as well.

Roger’s links to check out:
Roger Ver Website
Bitcoin.com
Bitcoin Bounty Hunter
Bitcoin Hivemind
Purse.io

Video Transcript

Introduction and the Islamic View of Money

Andre Rishi: Today, I would like to welcome a very special guest to the Islam and Bitcoin Podcast series. A man who I would say needs no introduction but who many people call Bitcoin Jesus.

A man who is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist in his own right, investing in a– not just investing, a serial investor, investing in numerous Bitcoin start-ups far more than I can name.

A man who I would also say sticks to his principles, sticks to his guns so much so that he has actually let go of his citizenship in United States and now resides between a beautiful Saint Kitts and Japan. I would like to extend a warm welcome As-salamu alaykum, peace to you and welcome to the show, Roger Ver.

Roger Ver: Thanks so much for having me on.

Andre Rishi: It’s so nice to have you here today, man. So, you’re coming to us today from where?

Roger Ver: I’m in Tokyo today.

Andre Rishi: Tokyo today? All right, cool. Again, just wanted to thank you for coming on to the show. The reason I invited you on to the show is because I feel like right now within the Bitcoin community there’s probably like three people who I would say are really good at being able to speak on Bitcoin in a very articulate manner where a lot of people can understand, and I actually would put you with the number 1 spot.

I would say you would fall as my number 1, Andreas Antonopoulos and also, I hope I don’t butcher his last name so please forgive me Erik Voorhees I think is his last name.

Roger Ver: Yup.

Andre Rishi: So, yeah man, so again second, third time I’m going to say thank you for coming to the show, being on the show. I just wanted to have a conversation with you about Bitcoin, the technology behind it.

The reason being is because the Muslim community has now really been looking into this type of currency. And the main reason why is because a lot of the principles and teachings in Islam teaches that when it comes to money, money should be something that is, what it should be something as beneficial to humanity. It should be something that doesn’t oppress.

It shouldn’t be based on fractional reserve, right, you can’t give what you don’t have. It shouldn’t be tied to debt. It shouldn’t be tied to usury and it shouldn’t be where you can just sort of print it out of thin air and just add, whatever you punch of couple of keys in the keyboard with bunch of zeros behind it and you got a trillion dollars right there.

So, with that being said though we do have some Muslims who they are– again, they are looking at this and they’re checking out, they have a lot of questions. At the same time, you have a lot of Muslims who are oblivious to this.

So, before I even get into, just sort of covering the basics of what Bitcoin is, I guess the first question I would love to ask you, just for our audience to get a little bit of background on you is when did you dis- I can’t say discover Bitcoin, when did you learn about Bitcoin?

How Roger Learned About Bitcoin

Roger Ver: So, I learned about Bitcoin by listening to another Podcast called Free Talk Live and they mentioned Bitcoin, actually in reference to the Silk Road…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …and I’ve never used or bought, or sold any drugs myself, I very, very rarely drink alcohol, never tried smoking a cigarette. But when I heard that there is a money that was enabling people to trade freely with other people around the world, and there wasn’t anything anybody could do to stop it, I thought that must be a really, really interesting type of money.

And then I Googled Bitcoin and started learning about it from there and when I understood the characteristics, I realized this is going to change the way that every single human being on the planet gets to act, interact with every single other human being on the planet. And…

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: …what an exciting, wonderful thing to be involved in something like that. And the characteristics that you just mentioned a moment ago about what Islam says money should be, wow you guys should be really, really excited about Bitcoin because it’s all of those things…

Andre Rishi: Yeah

Roger Ver: it states, so…

Andre Rishi: Yeah. You know you’re right, you’re right. And again, I think the Muslim community is sort of just lagging behind in it for some reason, I don’t know why. But people like you, I think you are probably one of the biggest educators out there in the Bitcoin space so I really want to thank you for that. Now, let me ask you this. When you first heard about Bitcoin, did you get it right away, did you get it?

Roger Ver: So, the very first time I heard about it was in late 2010 and I Googled it, and the price of bitcoin was like around 5 cents per bitcoin at that point.

Andre Rishi: Whoa, Ok.

Roger Ver: And I, at that time I probably only spent maybe 5 or 10 minutes looking at it. I thought, oh this is kind of interesting but if nobody is using it, it’s not worth anything. And the reason it was 5 cents at that time was because nobody was using it. And I didn’t spend enough time looking into all of it. And then I Googled, I heard about it again on the same radio program a couple months later.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: And I Googled it again at that time and bitcoin was around 50 cents at that time. And then I spent a little bit more time reading about it. And that’s when I put all the pieces together that you can send and receive any amount of money with anyone, anywhere in the world instantly almost for free and there is nothing that anybody can do to stop it, nobody can freeze your account and nobody can block you from sending the funds.

And if you’re very careful about how you use it, you can do it privately as well, that’s going to change everything. And if the supply is limited, it’s not like Dollars or Euros or Yen where these politicians can print as many as they want at any time for any reason.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: And then use the money that they print up to buy guns and bombs and tanks…

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Roger Ver: …and kill around the world. And none of that can happen where if the world starts using bitcoins. So, I knew I wanted to get involved with Bitcoin full-time and I knew it was going to catch on and here we are in almost six years later, and bitcoin’s 600 and something dollars a bitcoin, and Microsoft, and Dell, and Newegg, and Expedia and all these companies are accepting bitcoin around the world.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: I used it to pay for my dinner last night like…

Andre Rishi:  Wow.

Roger Ver: …there’s a bunch of places in Tokyo that accept bitcoin. There are so many places online like it’s really spreading quickly because once people hear about Bitcoin, and they understand the characteristics of Bitcoin, it becomes so blatantly obvious how it’s so much better than Dollars or Euros or Yen.

And I think we’re about to see a separation of money and state like up till now everybody’s from the time they’re born and they start going to government schools, they learned that governments have to issue money and if governments…

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: …didn’t issue money, they think the whole world would fall apart. But we’re seeing right before our eyes right now that we don’t need governments to issue money and in fact, the money that’s been created by the free market in the form of Bitcoin is a much more trustworthy form of money.

I mean, I think anybody that stops and thinks for a moment, which do you trust more, your local politician or your federal politician versus the laws of mathematics?

Andre Rishi:  Right.

Bitcoin is Based on the Law of Mathematics

Roger Ver: And Bitcoin is based on the laws of mathematics whereas government issued money is you know at the whim of some politician. And I think it’s pretty clear to everybody we can trust the laws of mathematics more than we can trust the whim of some politician that we probably never met and doesn’t care about us anyhow.

Andre Rishi: Agree.

Roger Ver: So, for me I think the whole world is going to be able to recognize that you know mathematics is more trustworthy than politics and we should put our trust in a money that is based on the laws of mathematics rather than some politicians in some far-off land.

Andre Rishi:  I completely agree. I know just speaking for myself I came about Bitcoin, I would say I came rather late to Bitcoin, 2012 you know I consider that late.

Roger Ver: 2016 is still really, really early to be honest. [Laughter] like you look around your friends that you didn’t meet through Bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm

Roger Ver: How many of them are really aware you’re using Bitcoin yet? And it’s almost none of them because…

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Roger Ver: …most people they’ve heard the word maybe at this point but they have no idea how it’s different from PayPal or Venmo or anything, these other things. And it’s our job to go out and explain to these people how it’s fundamentally different than all of these other payment networks and currencies that existed before. Thanks for making this Podcast to help do that.

Andre Rishi: Oh man, thank you for being on and helping out. And again, you know doing what you do best, educating others on Bitcoin and articulating this extremely well if I may say so myself. I know for myself like I said I didn’t get it, you know I looked at it in 2012– actually my brother was the one who introduced me to it.

I was working with my brothers, one of them is an engineer, the other one is a software programmer and we got together working on developing some apps. And I was really into trying to find a way to see if we can use and develop an app that will allow us to buy goods and services using gold but without us having to supply the gold

I’ve seen certain companies try this, like, was it E-gold? Was is it not? Probably not E-gold but there is certain…

Roger Ver: It was E-gold.

Andre Rishi: It was?

Roger Ver: It started to get popular and then the government came in and…

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Roger Ver: …stole all the gold. I was a customer, I had some gold…

Andre Rishi: Oh really?

Roger Ver: And I was using it to accept the payments for a computer memory. And as soon as it started to get popular enough literally, the government came and then literally stole the gold from all the customers because a few of the customers were using the service to do something that the politicians didn’t apparently like.

And so, all of the customers had their fund seized and like that’s a big problem and that’s one of the biggest strengths of Bitcoin. But I think a lot of people when they first hear about Bitcoin they think, oh that’s too good to be true and…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …governments will shut it down if they don’t like it. But they have to understand; the only way to shut down Bitcoin would be to turn off the entire internet in the entire world.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: And keep the internet turned off. And the instant that the internet turns back on again, Bitcoin starts right back up where it left off. So, that’s a pretty exciting technology. You can’t say the same about PayPal or Venmo or Bank of America or anything else whereas with Bitcoin, the only way to stop it is to turn off the entire world’s internet and keep it turned off. And obviously that’s not going to happen.

Andre Rishi: Right, right. God willing, God willing not. So, ok so you mentioned that you talked about people putting their trust in a mathematical formula which is what Bitcoin is based off of. So, if you can, for our audience who they, who knows nothing about Bitcoin, can you just tell us what is Bitcoin?

What is Bitcoin?

Roger Ver: So, with a normal bank or credit card or PayPal or whatever, they have a ledger that keeps track of how many dollars or how many, whatever currency, are in each person’s account. And if I transfer money from me to you, they update their ledger and that ledger stored on their servers in their data center in Silicon Valley or wherever the company happens to be based.

And let’s say, I were to send some money to you and for whatever reasons some government doesn’t like that I’m sending it to you or some business entity doesn’t like that for some reason, all they have to do is they go right to that ledger and then they just can reverse the transaction or block it from happening. Or they can control however they want because that ledger is in one place on their servers in their data center. Bitcoin has a worldwide ledger…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …that keeps track of who has, which bitcoins. That ledger is called the Blockchain. But instead of that ledger being on one computer in one data center, it’s on everybody’s computer that’s running the Bitcoin software including the laptop that I’m talking to you on right now.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: I have a copy of that entire ledger that keeps track of exactly who owns what bitcoins, and all these computers around the world that are running the Bitcoin software that have a copy of this ledger, they all stay in-sync with each other.

And they are all talking and communicating with each other to make sure that all the ledgers match everybody else’s ledger on all these computers. So, in order to stop Bitcoin, they would have to turn off all these computers around the world that have a copy of this Bitcoin ledger called the Blockchain.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: And there’s, tens of thousands of these around the world. So, you can’t, and anybody can turn one on and get one set up and in a couple of hours as well and have the entire thing downloaded in-sync. And that’s what’s so different about it. So, like let’s say I have a friend in Iran.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: Right, and like Iranians are people too.

Andre Rishi: Right, right.

Roger Ver: Right. Let’s say I want to pay him to do some web developing work for me, I can’t do that with Visa, I can’t do that with Bank of America, I can’t do that with PayPal.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: Because some politicians in Washington DC that I have never met have decided that I’m not allowed to send money to that guy. To me that’s crazy. I’ve never met them, they’ve never met me, why should they have any say whatsoever as to who I can and can’t do business with around the world?

And with Bitcoin nobody can stop me from doing business anywhere around the world. And I think that’s a wonderful thing for all humankind because suddenly now, everybody on the entire planet regardless of where they were born…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …regardless of what color their skin is, regardless of what religion they happen to believe in, they can now send and receive money with anyone else, anywhere in the world and they don’t have to get permission from anybody.

And for me that just, it seems so incredibly clearly beneficial for the entire humankind, like it’s a great step forward for all humankind.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver:  One thing that somebody was kind of joking about but kind of half-way true that I think is a really interesting point, when I was first reading about Bitcoin maybe back in 2011 or 2012…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …on the most popular Bitcoin forums. Somebody made a post that was a half joke but half serious and I thought it was really, really funny and interesting point. He said, “Finally, thanks to Bitcoin, when we make contact with extraterrestrials, we won’t have to be embarrassed about the type of money we’re using anymore.”

[Laughter]

And if you think about it, humans have been using little round pieces of metal and pieces of paper to do business with each other around the world. That is so incredibly primitive compared to Bitcoin and this worldwide ledger.

So, he said, “Now, we don’t have to be embarrassed about the type of money we’re using and when you, meet extraterrestrial someday.” So, I thought that was pretty funny but also kind of true.

What is a Bitcoin Wallet?

Andre Rishi: Yeah definitely, definitely. Now, Ok, so you know we’re able to spend this bitcoin, how do people store it? Like what, there’s a thing called a wallet, right? So, how does this work in relation to Bitcoin? Because a lot of people say, well first, is this something that, obviously it’s not something that people can hold, it’s all digital, right? And again, like I said there’s a thing called wallet, what exactly is a wallet?

Roger Ver: So, a nice way to think about email or Bitcoin is kind of like email. There’s no official email company, you have Gmail and Yahoo and Hotmail and a whole bunch of other email clients and softwares, because email’s a protocol.

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, and anybody can write software that interacts with the email protocol. Bitcoin is the same way. Anybody can write software that interacts with the Bitcoin protocol so anybody can write Bitcoin wallet software.

Anybody can write the software that interacts with Bitcoin. So, there’s dozens and dozens of different choices when it comes to Bitcoin wallets.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: And we have a whole bunch only listed on bitcoin.com, and you can choose one, there’s ones for iPhone, Android, for your desktop, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, whatever you want. And basically, the way Bitcoin works is there’s kind of two different numbers associated with Bitcoin. There’s the public Bitcoin address…

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: …which is just a long number.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: And you can tell that public number to anybody, anywhere in the world and all they can do is send you money.

Andre Rishi: All right.

Roger Ver: And every single public number has a corresponding private number.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: And that private number is what’s required in order to be able to spend the bitcoins that are sitting at the public number.

Andre Rishi: Got it.

Roger Ver: So, you keep the private number secret, and you can tell your public number to everybody. And these, what these wallet softwares do is they keep track of the private and public numbers for you and they let you tell people the public number and they allow you to spend the bitcoins using the private numbers.

But what interesting clever people have done is they’ve taken physical coins like this. I don’t know how well it can show up there.

Andre Rishi: Oh yeah, I can see that.

Roger Ver: Right.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: And so, on this coin right here there’s a hologram on this side and it says .001 bitcoin which is around 65 US cents at the moment?

Andre Rishi: Get out of here.

Roger Ver: If you were to peel off this hologram, underneath the hologram is the private, like the secret number that’s required in order to spend the bitcoin from the public address…

Andre Rishi: The private number.

Roger Ver: …right.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: So, you could pick a wallet software, peel off this hologram, import the secret number that’s under the hologram and then the bitcoins are back in digital form in your wallet software. So, people have managed to make physical representations of bitcoin as well.

And actual information is required to spend the money is actually right in here under this hologram, and I try and carry these around with me.

Andre Rishi: Wow.

Roger Ver: This is a whole roll of them.

Andre Rishi:  That’s a stack. Man don’t… [Laughter]

Roger Ver: If somebody meets me in person and ask me for one and I, usually I have them with me and I’ll be more than glad to give you one for free.

Andre Rishi: Wow.

Roger Ver: So, if you don’t have already and if you’re new to Bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: Wow. So, I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people trying to like stalk you for some bitcoin. [Laughter]

Roger Ver: Maybe. So, but most people keep their bitcoins on their phone and– or on their computer or some at both and that makes it the easiest way, so there’s a whole bunch of different apps here.

And I’ll show you, I don’t know how well it will come up on the screen there. But I have a whole folder. All of these are different Bitcoin apps in these folders. I have bunch of different ones in there.

Andre Rishi:  Oh yeah, yeah, I use Airbitz. I see you have Airbitz on there. I see…Yeah.

Roger Ver: I have Airbitz, I have Breadwallet, I have Blockchain, I have Copay, I have a whole bunch of different wallets, and I could actually swipe back and forth, I probably have close to a dozen different wallets on my phone. But to be honest most people just need one wallet. Find what you like…

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: …or ask your friend what they like and use the one that they’re liking. I have a bunch of them because I do Bitcoin stuff all day everyday…

Andre Rishi: All day.

Roger Ver: …and it’s kind of my job to test them and be aware of what features they have in them.

Andre Rishi: Cool. Now you just held up you know that physical coin, representation coin and it has the like you said the hologram.

Roger Ver: Mm-hmm.

Andre Rishi: Now, people are going to see this and start asking, “Ok so where do I get bitcoin?”

Where to Get Bitcoin

Roger Ver: The easiest way is to head on over to bitcoin.com, and you can choose your country and it will show you a list of places in your country that you can buy bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: All right, and bitcoin.com that is a website; it’s your website, correct?

Roger Ver: Right. Yeah.

Andre Rishi: Awesome. Tell us a little bit about this, your website, what can they learn on this website? What’s it all about? Obviously, Bitcoin but… [Laughter]

Roger Ver: Right. It’s all about Bitcoin. We’re adding more and more stuff all the time. I’m sitting here in my office with some other guys that are helping me work on bitcoin.com all the time. We have a full set of news like every day.

We have all the latest news about Bitcoins at news.bitcoin.com. We have a forum at forum.bitcoin.com where people that are new to Bitcoin can start talking with new people and ask questions.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: Or if you’re a Bitcoin expert, you can talk with other Bitcoin experts and discuss the latest things. We have a really neat thing, if you don’t have any bitcoins yet, you can tweet a message and get paid in bitcoin for tweeting a message and that’s over [Laughter] on bitcoin.com. Before Bitcoin that sort of thing wasn’t possible before.

We have all sorts of t-shirts and stickers and things like that for sale, we have all sorts of stuff over there. We have a whole guide to all the different Bitcoin wallets, so you can read about the different wallets and figure out which wallet is right for you. There’s just more and more stuff all the time.

So, the easiest way is just to go over there and take a look at bitcoin.com whether you’re an expert and know all about Bitcoin already or if you’re brand new to Bitcoin and just looking to get started. We have all the information for you.

Andre Rishi: All right, I definitely will put that for our audience members in the show notes, so they have a way to go to your site and check that out. And it sounds like you’re saying whether you’re a newbie or an expert, seems like there’s a whole lot of information they can gather just by visiting your site, bitcoin.com

Roger Ver: If you want a Bitcoin t-shirt like this one, they’re for sale over there [Laughter] on the website so…

Andre Rishi: That is awesome, man. That is awe- I have to get one of those actually. So, I may be just venturing over to get one of those. Now, one of the things I wanted to segue into, you mentioned earlier in regards to how Bitcoin seems to be very much in harmony with the principles, with Islamic principles of what money should be. I would love it if you can sort of speak on, you touched in it a little bit but the difference is what you see with the modern-day banking system compared to Bitcoin.

Modern Day Banking System vs Bitcoin

Roger Ver: Right. With the current banking and monetary system, everybody knows that counterfeiting is bad. If you or I were to counterfeit a bunch of dollars in my office or your office there, we would go to jail for counterfeiting because it’s stealing value from all the other people that are using the same type of money.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: And everybody seems to know that and accept that and realizes that counterfeiting is a bad thing. Yet, when governments print the whole bunch of money, they call it fancy names like quantitative easing…

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Roger Ver: …or economic stimulus, but it’s the exact same thing as counterfeiting, and it’s detrimental to the economy for the exact same reasons. It’s one group of people printing a bunch of dollars out of thin air, and then using it to buy goods and services out of the economy that would have otherwise been gone to other people that have dollars.

And so, every– there’s more dollars competing for the same amount of physical goods. So, it’s stealing and it harms the economy the exact same way. And just because they call it fancy names like quantitative easing or economic stimulus doesn’t change the underlying fact of the matter is that it’s stealing from everybody else.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: And with Bitcoin, the supply of bitcoin is mathematically limited to 21 million bitcoins. There’s no Central Bank of Bitcoin that can just make extra bitcoins out of thin air.

Andre Rishi: So, you just can’t inflate the marketplace with bitcoin?

Roger Ver: That’s right. It’s just like gold in that sense, right? There’s a limited amount of gold in the earth’s crust that humans can dig out of the earth.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: With bitcoin there’s a limited amount of bitcoins that have been determined by the mathematical algorithm…

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: …at the time Bitcoin was created and nobody can change that. And that’s a really, really wonderful thing for the entire world’s economy because now suddenly there is no central group of people that can just make fake money out of thin air, stealing wealth from everybody else in the process.

And that’s a great thing for the entire world’s economy and everybody. And one of the biggest things that for me that has it– that makes Bitcoins so exciting is that Bitcoin doesn’t care where you were born, it doesn’t…

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: …care what kind of passport you have. It doesn’t care what color your skin is. It doesn’t care how old you are. Anybody, anywhere in the world can use Bitcoin and you don’t have to get permission from anybody like that just make so much more sense than the system we have today.

Whereas, if I want to send money from me to you, with Bitcoin I can do it. We don’t have to ask anybody. With some other payment system, we’d have to ask that company, we’d have to ask the banks that are involved; we’d have to ask the governments in the various countries.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: There you have to get permission from all sorts of strangers who have never met all of us, who we’ve never met them, they know nothing about our lives yet we have to get permission from them to send value?

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: That’s like, that’s crazy. We’re all this, we’re all human beings, we’re all in the same level, why should one group of human beings have to get permission from another group of human beings to send money to and from each other?

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: That’s crazy. Bitcoin puts an end to that.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: So, for me, that’s just so incredibly exciting.

Andre Rishi: Right. And it’s so funny what you’re saying that in regards to us needing to get permission, it just came to mind, I actually think if you were to try to cross the border of United States, I think it’s, if it’s over $10,000, I think you have to report it or something like that.

So, what you’re saying is Bitcoin is borderless, you can cross with a million dollars worth of Bitcoin into any country anytime with ease?

Roger Ver: You can do that if these people that we’ve never met, they claim the right to decide what we can or can’t do in our lives, if they catch you doing that, they might do bad things to you.

Andre Rishi: Mmm…

Roger Ver: But at the end of the day, Bitcoin is just mathematics.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: And no amount of men with guns can solve a math problem, right? It takes…

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: …either you have the secret number that’s required to spend the bitcoin…

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: …or you don’t. It doesn’t matter how many guns are pointed at mathematics; mathematics doesn’t care. So, all of these politicians and men with guns that want to control other people in what they do in their financial lives, Bitcoin doesn’t care.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: So, that’s why there’s an expression that Bitcoin is the honey badger of money. [Laughter] Bitcoin doesn’t care.

Putting an End to War with Bitcoin

Andre Rishi: Now, you talked about like men with guns, and how do you see Bitcoin playing itself out when it comes to whether it be enabling wars or de-escalating or stopping wars since it isn’t fiat currency?

Roger Ver: Right. If you look around the world pretty much the US is the biggest wager of wars around the world. They love dropping bombs on people all over the planet. And to me, I find that absolutely disgusting. And, let’s give an example of like just how brainwashed almost everybody is, right?

Andre Rishi: Mmm.

Roger Ver: If once, a stranger, if somebody you have never met told you to go and kill somebody else you’ve never met, you would say, “Hell, no!” [Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: “Are you nuts? Why would I kill somebody I’ve never met?” But that’s exactly what’s happening in the US military, right? People higher up in the military tell people lower down in the military who they’ve never met directly, “Go and kill these people in some far-off land who you’ve never met.” That is absolute insanity.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: You should never ever, ever kill somebody you’ve never met because somebody else you’ve never met has told you.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: All of this killing though is being funded by taxes and inflation. It’s a combination of two.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: And in my point of view, like if Starbucks came and started telling people you have to buy our Starbucks coffee or we’re going to send you to jail if you don’t buy it.

Andre Rishi: Mmm.

Roger Ver: Everybody would think Starbucks is nuts.

Andre Rishi: Crazy, yeah.

Roger Ver: Right? And everybody thinks Starbucks is horrible and crazy yet the US government goes around and tells everybody, “Hey, you have to give us your money and we’re going to use it to do all sorts of things including killing people in far-off lands…”

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: “…and if you don’t give us your money, we’re going to send you to jail.”

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: If Starbucks did the exact same thing, we would all know instantly that Starbucks is nuts and we should be opposed to Starbucks for doing that.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: When governments do the exact same thing, it’s every bit as wrong as if Starbucks were to do it, we should oppose them for it too. And one of the great ways in which governments were able to do all this sort of thing is by controlling the money supply.

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Roger Ver: Both by controlling all the banks and printing money and issuing the money, and being able to block and control where the money flows, and being able to print extra money out of thin air at any time for any reason.

Bitcoin takes both of those powers away from them. Governments will no longer be able to print money out of thin air, and governments will no longer be able to control who does business with what. It’ll make direct taxation or seizure of people’s accounts very, very difficult like Bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: Mmm.

Roger Ver: Really, really, people always ask like, “Well, how is government going to regulate Bitcoin?” Right? “What are you going to do if government regulates Bitcoin?” They have it exactly backwards. Governments aren’t going to regulate Bitcoin. Bitcoin is going to regulate governments.

Andre Rishi: Mmm.

Roger Ver: Bitcoin is draining the power and control that governments have with people. And that’s a wonderful, wonderful thing for all of humanity and it has me, you know, excited in getting up early every day and staying up late every night to work on Bitcoin because I want to bring about these positive changes for the world as quickly as possible.

World Governments’ Reaction to Bitcoin

Andre Rishi: And I think that’s rather cool, man. I really, I think it’s rather cool. And again, you just, wonderful segue into governance. Talking about how Bitcoin would be the, what’s the word, the impetus that would change governments.

From your travels all over the world, what have you seen has been the reaction to governments in regards to Bitcoin? In Saint Kitts for one and let’s start in with Saint Kitts and Japan where those two places that you call home.

Roger Ver: I think government isn’t one specific entity. All governments were made up of you know thousands or millions sometimes of individual people so different people within government have different views and different takes on Bitcoin.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: I hope and think Saint Kitts is starting to come around but it was a little bit of a slow start there.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: Japan, you know there are lots of politicians here. One overall theme I’ve seen in Japan is that the name of the person that created Bitcoin and the name that person was using was Satoshi Nakamoto.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: Which is a Japanese name, almost for sure he wasn’t actually a Japanese person, maybe he was but it seems unlikely.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: But a lot of these Japanese politicians seem to have this nationalistic pride that Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto. So, we want the entire world to know what a wonderful thing was created by this Japanese person and so they seem to like Bitcoin for that reason which is you know I’ll take allies where I can find them, and if they want to like Bitcoin…

Andre Rishi: Yeah, man.

Roger Ver: …for that reason [Laughter] that’s fine with me too.

Bitcoin Blockchain Benefiting Humanity

Andre Rishi: I completely agree. I agree. Now, let me actually sort of talk about the technology behind Bitcoin, the Blockchain. Now you’ve talked about– we talked about how, you know, Bitcoin is not something that you can just inflate at whim just like you can the fiat-based currency.

We talked about how Bitcoin can potentially change governance. How do you see the technology behind Bitcoin benefitting humanity? And that’s a pretty broad, that’s a pretty big question.

Roger Ver: One of the biggest hindrance is the humanity’s progression is government intervention in the economy via both inflation and war. Like there is a limited amount of human energy that humans have each day, and that human energy should be spent producing computers and shoes and cars and housing and food for people to eat, not if people are busy building bombs and tanks and guns.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: All that energy and time and effort and resources that are being used to produce those guns and tanks and bombs…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …is energy that wasn’t able to be used producing clothes and food and housing and clean water. And not only that, but then when those bombs and guns and tanks are used, usually they’re used to blow up people’s food…

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: …and clothing and housing and clean waters. So, it’s just…

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: …it’s huge drain on the economy. And Bitcoin strips away government’s ability to fund wars around the world.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: Or what’s going to happen, maybe the next time somebody wants to fund the war and the people get together and say, “Hey, we don’t want a war.” And maybe they pool their resources together in the form of a bitcoin bounty and say anybody that starts a war, there’s a bounty for X million dollars’ worth of bitcoin on that person’s head who tries to start the war.

Like that’s an interesting way for the people to fight back against war. And maybe we will see something like that in the future.

Andre Rishi: It is.

Roger Ver: So, that’s, no, no average Joe on the street wants to be involved in a war anyway. He just wants to live his life with his friends and family and be safe and have enough food to eat. And its only governments and politicians that want to start dropping bombs on people around the world.

Bitcoin Bounty Hunter

Andre Rishi: I completely agree. You mentioned you know putting a bounty on bitcoin, you have a website I believe called Bitcoin Bounty Hunter, is that right?

Roger Ver: Right. So…

Andre Rishi: What is that about?

Roger Ver: So, just like with anything in life, it can be used for both good and bad purposes.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: Unfortunately, some bad people tried to use bitcoin to do bad things with or have stolen bitcoins or have done things but… So, I set up a website called Bitcoin Bounty Hunter where if somebody has done something bad, you can list a number of bitcoins that you’re willing to offer as a bounty for traditional law enforcement to go and find the person and make an arrest. And hope…

Andre Rishi: Has anyone cashed in on it?

Roger Ver: There’s one that’s in the process…

Andre Rishi: Ok. Ok.

Roger Ver: …at this point. We’re waiting for the final, like, conviction and that sort of thing to happen.

Andre Rishi: Wow.

Roger Ver: But that will be interesting as well, but there is about, I’d have to look at the current value but maybe 45,000, $50,000 worth of bitcoin as the current value. And it looks like somebody is going to be able to collect that.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: At some point which will be exciting when we get to announce all of that publicly. But it looked like it was a direct result. We offered the bounty to catch this hacker that was extorting people and doing bad things.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: And it looks like one of his friends, who’s friends to him but thought, “You know, I like him but I like $50,000 worth of bitcoin more.”

Andre Rishi: Even, yeah.

Roger Ver: So, he called the police and gave all the information up to the police and that’s kind of a good thing.

Andre Rishi: Wow.

Roger Ver: So, we kind of turn the tables on the hackers, and the bad people are doing bad things with bitcoin.

The Use of Blockchain Technology

Andre Rishi: That definitely sounds good, man. That definitely sounds good. And again, just going back to the Blockchain and you mentioned how you really do see it benefitting humanity. And the two things you really mentioned was war and finance.

I’m curious, because you have been an investor in so many Bitcoin start-ups, and because you’re so well entrenched within the Bitcoin community, are you seeing where people are actually using blockchain technology for things such as health care systems, patents maybe, open-source patents with Blockchain technology, anything like this at all? Are you beginning to see any technology like this?

Roger Ver: So, lots of people are starting to work on that sort of thing for like lands title registries for example…

Andre Rishi: Ok

Roger Ver: …or the Bitcoin Blockchain or most Blockchains depending on how much processing power there is to secure it…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …are the most secure indestructible ledger that humans have ever figured out how to create. So, anytime we want to have a public record of something Blockchains are absolutely a wonderful place store that. So, but all of that comes secondary in my view from the power of money. Money really…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …really has an effect on every single person’s life on the entire planet, whether you’re you know Warren Buffett worth billions of dollars or if you are living in some third world country on a dollar a day, money is an important part of your life. And Bitcoin improves the lives of all those people whether it’s you know the super-rich or the super-poor, Bitcoin helps all of them.

Andre Rishi: I agree. I agree. Now speaking of again money and affecting those who are rich and those who are poor, what about countries such as, you look at the continent of Africa where you know with Bitcoin you need an internet connection and you may have like a lot of dark spots on continents like Africa. So, what do you see in regards to Bitcoin spreading to those places?

And, if I can throw in another question as well, do you see a problem happening if let’s say maybe a lot of the early adopters of Bitcoin, who maybe were just buying a lot of bitcoin and sort of hoarding and holding on to it, the early comers; do you think that will negatively affect those who step into Bitcoin later on when internet in their region becomes available? That’s two different questions there.

Roger Ver: Yeah, you have two very different questions there, so…

Andre Rishi: I have two very different questions. Let’s start with the Africa first, the continent, places where there’s no internet connection, what’s up with that?

Roger Ver: So, I think lots of early Bitcoin adopters and lots of wealthy people want to see everybody in the entire world have access to the internet, and we see, Elon Musk is wanting to put a bunch of satellites around the world to give every single person on the planet access the internet, and it’s getting cheaper and cheaper now. You can use a bitcoin, you need about a $20 cell phone, can use a bitcoin wallet now.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: And in some parts of the world, $20 is still a lot of money but that’s only going to get cheaper. Today, it’s $20, next year it’s going to be $10.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: And then $5 a year after that, and pretty soon it will be close to free.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: So, it just takes a little bit of more time and effort and resources but that’s coming, internet’s coming to everybody in the entire world and a lot of these people want that to happen.  

And in regards to early adopters, like myself, who has bought you know a lot of bitcoin and are holding on to it, and people wonder like, “Well, aren’t we going to be able to have this big influence on the market in the future?”

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: Maybe. But that’s nothing compared to the influence that central banks have today and forever if we’re using government-issued money. Central banks can print as much money as they want to, any time for any reason until the end of time as long as people are using their money. With Bitcoin early adopters that have hoarded a bunch of Bitcoin from early on…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …maybe they can spend it and do a lot of stuff, but once they’ve spent it, it’s gone. They can’t just make more out of thin air like the central banks do today. So…

Andre Rishi: Right

Roger Ver: …with Bitcoin, if you think it’s a problem that early on people are hoarding a bunch of bitcoin, if you think that’s a problem, it’s only a problem once until they’ve spent their bitcoin. But central banks, it’s a problem forever until the central banks stop existing.

Andre Rishi: Right. Well one thing I would say, when I look at Bitcoin and again I look at the like Islamic principles, you know Islam has this, it has a function and it’s called zakat, don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this, it’s called zakat.

Roger Ver: Please tell me.

Andre Rishi: So, what this does is sometimes it’s called the charity tax or the poor tax. So, it’s really the only tax that’s mandatory in Islam that says once you hold X amount of wealth and you have to have held that wealth at least to rock bottom minimum a year, then you can be taxed 2.5% on that wealth.

And that wealth is supposed to be put back in to the marketplace to help those in need so those who are poor or maybe there’s someone who may have a really great idea but they don’t have a lot of money, you’re supposed to, you can use that money to help them invest to upstart their business. So, it’s, you can say it’s a way to not only help those who are poor but to stimulate the marketplace where it keeps money like keeps…

Roger Ver: And the person paying the zakat gets to choose where to direct it? Or…

Andre Rishi: They have to give it to someone who is Muslim, and they have to give it to someone in need so…

Roger Ver: But beyond those requirements, they can choose which Muslim…

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Roger Ver: …and which person in need?

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver:  Oh, that sounds very neat.

The Drawback or Negatives of Bitcoin

Andre Rishi: Yeah. So, when I hear you talking about this, it definitely seems like this is something that’s very much in harmony with the Islamic principles and something that I think a lot of Muslims would actually like.

I also know though that some Muslims are very skeptical about Bitcoin. So, we’ve mentioned like a lot of things that are really positive about it, what are any negatives? If you think there are any.

Roger Ver: The biggest negative or the biggest drawback is that it makes online extortion easier because now we have this anonymous money that can be anonymous. It’s not automatically anonymous but they can use it to try to extort people at a distance. So, somebody in you know in a far-off country could try to extort somebody in another far-off country…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …and demand that they paid them in bitcoins. So, the most common example of that is a software program called CryptoLocker which people get tricked into opening an attachment that came in an email.

Andre Rishi: Mmm… Yes.

Roger Ver: And it encrypts the entire hard drive and the creator of the software says, “Hey if you want me to give you the password to decrypt your hard drive and get all your files back, pay me you know $100 worth of bitcoin to this address.

And people have to pay the bitcoin and then they can decrypt their hard drive. If they don’t pay they lose access to all the files in the hard drive. So, that’s probably one of the biggest drawbacks that Bitcoin has.

But all the benefits compared to having to deal with being careful what attachments you open when someone sends you an email like… [Laughter]

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: People, governments aren’t going to be able to continue dropping bombs on people around the world.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: Like I think that’s worth having to be extra careful about what attachments you open in your email account compared to governments being able to no longer be able to afford to drop bombs on people around the world. It’s like not even a close to trade off there for me.

Andre Rishi: Right. And God forbid, if we did have an extortionist then again you know we will go right back to Bitcoin Bounty Hunter.

Roger Ver: Bitcoin Bounty Hunter

Bitcoin Hivemind

Andre Rishi: Exactly. And catch them that way. I also wanted to talk about a website you have called Bitcoin Hivemind, what is that exactly?

Roger Ver: So, Bitcoin Hivemind is not my website but it’s…

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: … a company I’ve been invest-, I’ve been– put up the seed money and have been you know, I’m an investor. I’m the only investor in that. I’ve been funding that for a while now. And basically, it’s really, really neat.

So, like I have a mind in my head here, you have a mind in your head, everybody that’s listening to this Podcast has a mind in their head. I know certain things in my mind that you don’t, you know certain things in your mind that I don’t, and each of the people listening to our Podcast know different things that you and I don’t know.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: So, what Bitcoin Hivemind is going to allow to do, thanks to Bitcoin and the Blockchain, is you can aggregate the wisdom of all these minds around the world to figure out what actions we should take today in order…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …to achieve our desired goals tomorrow. So, like I’m an expert in certain areas, you’re an expert in different areas, other people are experts in different areas, and individually you know we can get by Ok. But you can harness the power of a thousand or a million minds together which are a lot more powerful than…

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: …any of our one minds individually. And the way that works is it’s what called the prediction market, where you can have the likelihood of the future event happening based on whatever actions today.

And things that I’m confident in because I think I have the right knowledge required to that. I’ll be willing to risk money on that. If I’m not confident about something, hopefully I know that I’m not confident about it, so I’m not going to be able to risk money on that.

And the things that you’re confident in, you’ll risk money on, the things that you don’t know about, you won’t risk money on. So, for example like football, who’s going to win the Super Bowl? I have no idea. I don’t follow any of that.

I’m not going to risk a single penny on that. But on other things I do feel confident about, I would be willing to risk my money about. And so, everybody has these different areas of expertise and with Bitcoin Hivemind and using Bitcoin…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …we can harness these different areas of expertise today to figure out what course of actions humans should take today in order to achieve whatever desired ends tomorrow. So, like for example, like there is a huge debate about whether Obamacare is likely to help or hurt people or make people live longer or shorter or be good for the economy or bad for the economy like everybody has an opinion.

Using something like bitcoinhivemind.com, only people that are confident enough in their opinion that are willing to put real money on the line or going to participate. So, we can find out with a very high level of certainty like if Obamacare were to pass or not pass, are human– is human lifespan in the US going to be longer or shorter? Or tag is the economy going to do better or worse? So, I thought that just kind of everybody’s individual opinion, maybe there are some experts, maybe there’s not.

But with Bitcoin Hivemind we can aggregate all the knowledge of all these people and find out with much more certainty what’s likely to happen. So, it becomes this incredibly powerful tool where everybody wants people to have enough food to eat and live a long time and you know nice places to live in and clothes to wear and be warm and all that.

With Bitcoin Hivemind, we can harness the wisdom of crowds to figure out what actions we should take today to achieve the desired ends tomorrow and that is a really, really powerful tool for all of humankind to be able to move humankind in the right direction. And I’m really excited about once that’s already and once that gets launched. And previously there have been some sorts of things like that.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: But they were centralized, and as soon as they started to get popular where people were actually able to have an effect, the government shut them down. The most famous one was it a website called Intrade and as soon as it started to get popular, the government shut them down because prediction markets can be used not only to predict the future, they can also be used to influence the future.

Andre Rishi: Yes.

Roger Ver: And when politicians are worried that the outcome of their next election might be influenced by other people, they really don’t like that.

Andre Rishi: Well, I was just going to say just from you know how you’re describing Hivemind, I just instantly, I was thinking to myself, well that can actually affect the stock market then. That’s– that actually can have people either really happy or really worried. So, yeah, and I think…

Roger Ver: Incredibly powerful tool that I don’t think people understand.

Andre Rishi: Yeah.

Roger Ver: How powerful it is yet.

Andre Rishi: Yeah, and I think so long as it’s really used for the benefit of humanity, it can actually be a really good thing. It sounds like you can again, Bitcoin, one, the currency, but just even looking at the technology of the Blockchain, I can imagine there are so many different ways that you can implement that into systems that would really affect, effect humanity in a positive way.

And it sounds like the minds behind Bitcoin Hivemind, you, I’m sure you must have people within that group who are already thinking of that.

Roger Ver: Yeah, that’s right. They’re excited in working on it.

Mining Farms Controlling Bitcoin

Andre Rishi: Yeah, awesome. Now what if, some people may say do you ever see Bitcoin being controlled by one particular group? I know there is such a thing in Bitcoin called mining.

And when I learned about Bitcoin back in 2012, at that time you can say it was already too late for the individual to mine Bitcoin themselves, you really needed crazy super power to mine Bitcoin, and now you have these mining farms. What effects do you think these mining farms will have on the decentralization or centralization of Bitcoin?

Roger Ver: I don’t think it’s had much effect at all. And I think people are a little bit too worried about that sort of thing. Mining is already very centralized but it hasn’t caused any problems at all. And if it were to start becoming a problem, very quickly people could shift what’s called the proof of work algorithm…

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: …to something else. And I don’t really see it as a big of a problem as some people do.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: As far as Bitcoin being able to be usurped or taken over or controlled by somebody, I think that’s really, really, really, really unlikely. In fact, I think, if I thought it were likely I wouldn’t have got involved in Bitcoin at all. So, I don’t really don’t lose much sleep over that at night.

Where Can You Spend Bitcoin?

Andre Rishi: Ok. Now, how can people spend bitcoin? I do know that as you mentioned your Microsoft, Dell, there are a lot of places now that are accepting bitcoin that were not back in 2011, 2009, 2012, how– it’s still though doesn’t really seem that easy. So, how do you see that happening? How can you spend bitcoin, what’s an easy way to spend bitcoin?

Roger Ver: So, one of my very favorite websites to spend bitcoin on is the website called Purse.io P-U-R-S-E like a woman’s purse dot io.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: And that allows anybody here that you know 15%, 20% even 25% discount on every single purchase from Amazon. And to the way it works, you go over to amazon.com you put whatever you want in your Wish List at Amazon and then you paste the Wish List in over at purse.io and then somebody else who buy the good for you, and Amazon ships it directly to your house just like normal.

The other person gets the bitcoins. Everybody’s better off and happy. And the reason that discount is possible is because Amazon is using Amazon store credit to pay a bunch of people in other countries where governments have gotten a way of traditional payment systems and…

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: …they can’t use normal payment systems to pay them so all these people have a bunch of Amazon store credit but they would rather have bitcoins. They sell their Amazon store credit at a discount and they would, once they have the bitcoin, they’re free to do whatever they want with it.

So, if you know and you have something you want from Amazon, go paste it in at the purse.io and someone will buy it for you, they get the bitcoins, you get the item from Amazon and you saved you know 15%, 20% even 25%. And it’s actually fantastic way to save money and some people even turned it into a business where they’re buying…

Andre Rishi: I was just going to say, it sounds like you can actually buy things at a discount, turn right back around and probably sell it.

Roger Ver: Yeah. And a lot of people are doing that. Some people are even buying like gold and silver coins at a discount on Amazon and then they would resell the gold and silver coins or other people are buying you know iPads and iPhones and things like that and then resell them on their local Craigslist like there’s a huge, great, fantastic business opportunity there with purse.io

Future Dream for Bitcoin

Andre Rishi: Cool. Cool. Well, you’ve definitely given me, given us a lot of great information. All the websites you mentioned Bitcoin Bounty Hunter, Bitcoin Hivemind, bitcoin.com, purse.io, I’m definitely going to put those in the show notes.

I’m going to wrap things up in a little bit. You’ve been awesome, man. I just wanted to know, so if you were to give any predictions or if I can say, what would be your biggest dream that you would like to see come to fruition with Bitcoin?

Roger Ver: So, a couple hundred years ago, it would have seen like crazy talk to talk about the separation of church and state.

Andre Rishi: Mm-hmm.

Roger Ver: And today kind of seems like crazy talk to talk about the separation of money and state.

Andre Rishi: Right.

Roger Ver: I want to see a separation of money and state. I don’t think that there’s any reason the governments need to print, to coin, or control money in any way. And I think Bitcoin is the doorstep to making that a reality, and that’s what I’m working harder to do every day.

Conclusion and Where to Find Roger Ver

Andre Rishi: That’s really awesome, man. I really just want to take the time to thank you so much for appearing on the Podcast, you’ve given us a wealth of information. Where can we find you if somebody wanted to connect with you?

Roger Ver: The best place is probably is bitcoin.com, I’m trying to stay pretty active on the forums over there. And if you want to read a little bit more about me and my experiences in life at rogerver.com. And if I can recommend one book that I’m really big fan of it…

Andre Rishi: Sure.

Roger Ver: I think sums up things really well is there’s a book called, The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose.

Andre Rishi: Ok.

Roger Ver: And it’s a really fantastic book, and I think it will really change the way you look at the world. And I just read it recently, and it changed the way I look at the world again as well so it’s called, The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose and I really like that book.

Andre Rishi: Awesome, man. Awesome. Well again, I wanted to thank you for appearing on our show, you’ve been a, as we say a scholar and a gentleman. I’m wishing you continued success with all your business ventures, continued success in your personal and private life and we would like to see you continuing to do good, good things in the Bitcoin space, man.

Roger Ver: My pleasure. Thank you very, very much for having me on.

Andre Rishi: Thank you so much and I leave you the same way that I greeted you, As-salamu alaykum which means may peace be upon you.

Roger Ver: Thank you.

Andre Rishi: Thanks, Roger.