Transcript+
Welcome to The New Frontier, a Bitcoin centric podcast that bridges the gap between the transformative world of Bitcoin and the unique financial landscape of the Middle East. This podcast is brought to you by Onramp Mino and is Co hosted by Ralph Dobran, Managing Partner at Onramp Mino and Harris Irfan, CEO of Cordoba Capital Markets and advisor to Onramp Mino. Ralph and Harris have built their careers in traditional finance, accumulating extensive experience across capital markets, investment banking, and asset management. Each episode delves deep into how Bitcoin is reshaping finance, technology and investment within the region and beyond. From macroeconomic trends to real world applications, and from Islamic finance to sustainable energy practices, this show covers it all. In today's episode, we're thrilled to have two exceptional guests who are making waves in the Bitcoin community with their unique and powerful mission. They are brothers and also cofounders of Bitcoin Mesh List, a pioneering nonprofit organization dedicated to educating Muslims, Muslim owned businesses and Muslim scholars about the importance of Bitcoin from a sound money perspective. Their work is grounded in a deep conviction that Bitcoin offers the best pathway to escape the Reba based systems of traditional banking and Fiat currency. Abdullah, who's widely known as Muslim Bitcoiner on X, also hosts the popular Muslim Bitcoiner podcast where he dives deep into these crucial topics. We're honored to welcome Abdullah and Salaf to the show. Get ready for an insightful discussion that explores the intersection of faith, finance and Bitcoin. Hey everyone, welcome to the new Frontier. We have a few special guests today with us from Bitcoin Measureless, Abdullah and his brother Salah and as always my Co host Harry Serfan. How's everyone doing? Great. Fantastic. Great to have you guys. So we'll just jump straight into it. Abdullah Salah, could you start by telling us a little bit about Bitcoin Measureless, what it's all about? What's your mission and what inspired you to create this platform? Yeah. So I think Salah should probably start with how he got into Bitcoin and then how I got into Bitcoin because that eventually is what ended up leading us to create Bitcoin Measureless. Yeah, so. I think the journey started pre Bitcoin with me learning about Ron Paul. And this was during my college years trying to figure out politics. And, you know, out of listening to everyone, it sounded like Ron Paul was the one talking the most sense. And he was the only politician that was talking about the Federal Reserve and how much of an impact the Federal Reserve has and, and kind of manipulating the economy. And kind of that led to me doing a deep, deep dive on how Fiat money works and kind of having a deeper understanding there. And that primed me to kind of recognize, oh, OK, now we finally have a working alternative to to Fiat money. And then over next few years, I tried to get Abdullah interested as well. Of course, you know, he was like, yeah, that, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and nothing really kind of hit until I gave him a copy of the Bitcoin standard and I'll just let Abdullah take it from there. Yeah, yeah. So like, like Salaf said, I mean, Salaf has been telling me about Bitcoin since like 2014. And so, you know, he's he's he's really been trying to get me to kind of see it. But it wasn't until he gave me a copy of the Bitcoin standard. And once I read that, I, I was like, it kind of gave me a lot of food for thought. And then I started like, you know, consuming a bunch of other Bitcoin content. I started consuming podcasts and, you know, reading books and YouTube videos and stuff. And, you know, you kind of you get a hardware wallet and you start like, you know, buying some Bitcoin and messing around with it. And then next thing you know, you know, Salah is telling me, Hey, you know, you should, you should make a Twitter account and follow all of these toxic plebs. And I'm like, Oh, sure, that sounds great. So I make an account. I'm like, Oh, Muslim Bitcoin. I like, I didn't even put any thought into it. And then like, next thing you know, you know, it's just, it's really insane. Like I was not intending to having like a mass following or anything. But you know, that's, I guess that's just how it happened. I started researching it more and putting my thoughts out there. And, you know, my my brother and I were discussing further about like, how do we promote this Bitcoin thing to the general Muslim population? Because we found that like, yeah, there's some talk about Bitcoin among especially Islamic scholars, but like, it was never really framed in the right way. So like one of the things that kind of compelled us to actually create Bitcoin medulists as we listen to this podcast with Narman Ali Khan. And, you know, he was on a podcast with Mufti Farah's Adam and Islamic finance guru. And I love these brothers. I don't want to talk bad about them, but like the podcast or the the YouTube video was talking about it was like Bitcoin or something, something like, you know, Sharia compliant or whatever. So like Salah and I were excited like, Oh my God, guys, look not met. Ellie Khan is about to get orange built. So we fire up the video and like the 1st 10 minutes is about like Bitcoin and blockchain. And then the topic, the the conversation gets completely derailed talking about NFTS, web 3, metaverse and all this other stuff, which is like, like, like, it's, it's fine that, you know, if not mentally Khan wanted to learn about that, but it's like what? There wasn't even any mention of like the Federal Reserve or how Fiat works or like anything talking about the riba in Fiat. So like my brother and I were like, dude, we have to do something. So like, that's kind of like was like, let's just make a website and we're just let's come up with the name when we came up with Bitcoin Medulis and, you know, we registered it as a nonprofit. So all right, all it is right now is just a website that has educational material on there. And you know, we're, we're hoping to use this platform Inshallah to kind of help the general Muslim community understand this Bitcoin thing from a sound money perspective without all of the other added crypto noise attached to it. That's amazing, Abdullah. And. I can relate directly. So we had say for Dean on our podcast last time and you know, he was one of the 1st to get me into the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Before we transfer it over to you, Harris, quick question for you guys. Maybe you can translate what Bitcoin measures means to the non Arabic speaking community. It's like a committee, right? Yeah, that that's correct. So we kind of, you know, gave it some thought in terms of like what what do we call this? And you know, the, the name that just kind of popped into my head was, you know, Medulist, because we just want it to be like a gathering of, of Muslims that kind of discuss Bitcoin and we just want the the conversation to be about Bitcoin. And so it just makes sense to just go with Bitcoin Medulist. Amazing. Fantastic. I'm going to ask you the big question straight off the bat and that is how is Bitcoin anti riba? What is it about Bitcoin fundamentally that aligns it with Islam? Well, so you know, I, I think in before answering that question, it first to help frame what how, how riba is involved in the current Fiat monetary system, which you guys already went over in the last podcast was Saifuddin. But just to kind of recap, you know, the only way that Fiat is mined or the only way that new Fiat tokens are produced and distributed is through a proof of Reba algorithm. If, if, if, if I could use that term. So like anytime there's a new Fiat token that's generated, there has to be an interest bearing loan associated with it. So off the bat, anytime there's new money created in Fiat, there's already Reba attached to it. Now, like you could probably make the case that like, oh, OK, the, the, the, the money is, is already generated. So it doesn't have Reba involved in it. But I mean, at the end of the day, that money that you're using was only generated from Reba. So, and I think that kind of helps in framing the question and looking at Bitcoin and seeing whether it's anti ribbon. Now, you might look at this and just right off the bat, assume that, well, you know, if Fiat is completely entrenched in riba, then Bitcoin is like non Reba money. But we like to take it a step further and say, actually, no, we, we believe that Bitcoin is anti riba money. And we, we make the case that there's, there's three monetary properties associated with it being anti ripple money. First is it's fixed supply. So because it has a fixed supply, you can't really generate new Bitcoin. And you know, it's having a fixed supply already incentivizes people to save rather than go into debt. Because if you have a fixed supply, you're not, there can't be any new tokens that are created in order to help create a global debt based system on money. And the second is going to be the the fact that it's proof of work. So because there's there, there's an energy expenditure associated with the creation of Bitcoin. This is inherently it already makes it resistant to kind of, you know, creating any any new Bitcoin in a in in a non proof of work way or in in a not not energy expenditure way. And lastly is the digital portability. So this is the advantage that Bitcoin has over gold is that you can actually hold the Bitcoin itself, like you can hold it on on on a smartphone in your pocket, as opposed to gold where like, you know, if you wanted to store all of your wealth in gold, you know, you would have to store it somewhere and secure it. But with Bitcoin, all you need is 12 or 24 words. So right off the bat you already have this incentive for people to hold on to their Bitcoin and not trust third party to fractionally reserve against that Bitcoin. So we believe that like having these three properties doesn't just make Bitcoin non riba money, but actually makes it anti riba money. Wonderful, thank you for that and I'm looking forward to your anti riba meme. When is that coming out? I've, I've, I've made quite, quite a bit of memes talking about it, But you know, I, I will go ahead and mention that Salah and I have started working on a book and we're, we're, we're hopefully trying to make the case that, you know, throughout this book, making the case that Bitcoin is anti Ribbo money. I actually, I, you know, thinking about it now, I don't have a working title for it, but we, we might end up calling the book anti Ribbo money just to try to get that idea of front and center to any Muslim that, that's, that's curious about learning about Bitcoin from the Muslim perspective. But I, I, I, I will say that like, we're not, you know, we're not even really halfway done. We're still trying to put hours into it. I, I didn't realize that writing a book would require a lot of work. So, you know, we're, we're still going through that and you know, inshallah maybe sometime early next year, we'll we'll have a rough draft to review and then and then release subsequently Inshallah. Yeah, we'd love to have you on the show once the book is ready for being promoted and pushed out. So please keep us in mind on the topic of gold, Abdullah and Salah. You know, in Islam, gold has, you know, been viewed over many years, millennia, as a store of value. You touched on a few comparisons, but do you think Bitcoin is the modern equivalent of gold, or it's a total different asset class and it's just something else? So I'll take this one. It's so yes, gold has been sound money for, for Muslims for a long, long time. And, and interestingly, when Satoshi developed Bitcoin, if you read, you know, his white paper and his, you know, early postings, he, he talked about how, you know, you know, bitcoins mines like gold. It like gold, it requires time and energy to dig out of the ground or dig out of, you know, the protocol. And he makes so many different analogies to, to gold. So, you know, it's, I think it, I think it does like it takes a lot of inspiration from gold. And I think that's kind of kind of how maybe Muslims, you know, used to think about things as like, you know, letting kind of God's, you know, you know, creation kind of inform us how to make, you know, systems that would be beneficial for mankind. And so, yeah, definitely the modern, modern gold. But I think it can also be, you know, much more as well. Yeah, I, I also kind of view it that way as well. I mean, I, I, I find that gold is actually very useful because explaining gold's properties actually helps to explain Bitcoin. So yeah, I do kind of consider it as kind of a step that humanity takes after gold. I mean, it's just kind of like if you read about the history of money, you see humanity converging on these different commodities and you know, eventually we converge on silver and gold. And then, you know, right now it feels like that process has been kind of reversed with this current Fiat Fiat system of what what HOPPA calls of a system of partial barter where you have like over 160 different Fiat currencies, which, you know, it's kind of like reverse that process. But I feel like Bitcoin is kind of putting us putting humanity back on track to try to actually find the best money that we all can converge on. And, and, and to kind of speak about the 160 different currencies, I mean, so, you know, you know, each country likes to have its own own Fiat money that they get to print and they get to lend into existence. And, you know, this is something that, you know, I, I, I'm kind of a little puzzled about why Muslims are not picking up on, you know, the, the enormity of the problem when it comes to Fiat and Reba. So it's so ingrained that, you know, you can look up the currency of any, any country and you have to also kind of figure out what's the interest rate that, you know, the central Bank of that country is setting for that currency. So, you know, right off the bat, you can kind of, you know, get a clear idea of like how ingrained Aruba is into Fiat currencies, even the currencies of Muslim countries. And, and you know, you know, we, we as Muslims, I, I think we kind of get excited if we get, you know, a large sum of, of, of Fiat money because it's just kind of been wired into us from from birth or since childhood. And I think we kind of need to figure out a way of, you know, elevating the discourse. But just before we get to that, just kind of have a reframing of what Fiat money is. And if, you know, like Abdullah explained some already, Fiat requires riba in order to be created. And it requires that the country, you know, issue bonds or hold bonds on its balance sheet. Or if it requires the setting of an interest rate, you know, in so many facets, it requires, you know, riba or riba contracts. So, you know, if you have that level of involvement of Reba into the money, then, you know, maybe it shouldn't be called just Fiat money. It should be called Reba money. And, you know, whenever I try to explain, you know, Bitcoin to anyone, I always try to first start with explaining how Fiat money is actually Reba money. And, you know, we, we try to make it a point to call Fiat money Reba money so that, you know, Muslims can get an idea of like, you know, this is something you should be disgusted with. You know, if, if, if someone gave you a leather wallet and then you're like, oh, wow, this is a nice wallet. And then and then they also tell, yeah, it's it's really nice, high quality pig leather. You know, all of a sudden you're gonna be like, I don't know if I really want this, you know, So I think that's kind of like the goal is to kind of just reframe it as like this, this money that, you know, people are using day-to-day. It's Ribbo money and you shouldn't be comfortable with it. I I I love this phrase. You guys use proof of proof of Ribbo algorithm? That's fantastic. Let let me go back to gold for one second. What do you say to Muslims who say gold is the only or bimetallic currency is the only money of Islam? And sometimes they thought this hadith would be 6 ribawi items. So you know, date, sweet barley, salt, gold, silver. What do you say to those guys? You know, I've, I've, I've also had, you know, people on Twitter that also mentioned that where they say like gold and silver are the only Islamic currencies. And they do mention that hadith talking about the six different commodities where, you know, you where Reebok could be charged on them. But you know, I like, I like to explain that nothing in that hadith says that gold and silver or any of the, the four other commodities that were mentioned, that hadith doesn't mention that those have to be used as money. That if, if you actually look at that hadith and study it, you realize that the, the hadith is showing you what items Reba can be charged on. And actually, I think it was Mahalia Tucker that did a very fascinating YouTube video about that hadith where like he, he kind of extrapolates from all these different sources about like, actually, if you look at all of these different commodities that were mentioned in the hadith, the issue or the, the property that they all have in common is fungibility. So really like the thing that you can actually charge interest on are commodities that are fungible in nature. So again, I, you know, there, there is, there is some, there is a precedent for, you know, Islamic societies to, you know, where they've actually used the gold standard. But again, it doesn't have to be that way. That was just the best money at that time. And we, we contend that we have a better money because I mean, if we go back to a gold standard right now, I feel like the same thing is just going to happen again, where you end up having to trust third parties that are going to fractionally reserve against it. And then that kind of introduces this attack vector for Reba in, in the, in the money. So like, I, I think it's, that's why it's, it's also good to look at the history of money as well, because that kind of gives you a clear picture of like, oh, OK, because of gold and silver's weaknesses in their monetary properties, as good as they were, ended up actually introducing Fiat banking at the protocol level. So again, there's not really any requirement for gold to be used as money. What about the intrinsic value argument they say? So this is also something I like to meme about because it is, I would say the intrinsic value thing is almost is the very first thing that a lot of Muslim scholars, they will look at Bitcoin and immediately the third, the very first argument they make against it is that it has no intrinsic value. And to me, it just demonstrates that like you haven't really done any work to actually understand it at all, especially from first principles. But so there's two ways to approach this. The first way is to understand that one value is not intrinsic. You can easily demonstrate this by any commodity that you value it, that that value ends up changing based on the situation that you're in. So like, you know, you just make a simple example of like right now I have a cup of water that I'm drinking from and I don't value it that much. But if I was stranded out in the desert and I didn't have any water and you know, and I, I eventually find some water, I'm going to value it very, very highly. Nothing inside the water. It's value did not change. It's subjectively evaluated. That's the important thing is that value is subjective. But also, you know, when people say that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, they mean that it has no other non monetary use case. And to that we say actually, that's that's a good property that you want because you want your money to only be used as money. You don't want it to have these other non monetary use cases. So for you know, for for for gold, for example, it has other non monetary use cases. But primarily the reason why people hold gold isn't because, you know, someone is unexpectedly is going to need a gold tooth or is going to need some jewelry. You hold gold because of its monetary properties. So I think, you know, when you're talking about Bitcoin that, you know, untangling what that intrinsic value argument is, it kind of naturally leads to a discussion of phrasing the question of, OK, wait, what gives Bitcoin it's value or why is Bitcoin valuable? And I think that's a much better question or a much better approach to to answering that question instead of just off the bat saying, oh, it has no intrinsic value. The question that you should be asking is OK, what gives Bitcoin value? Yeah, great answer. I love that. Interesting. I'm gonna slightly change the subject and we're talking about Bitcoin as a, you know, as a form of money, as a store of value. But I want to talk about the financial system around a monetary system. Tell me a little bit about what role you think you see for Islamic finance and Islamic banking. I'm going to use the word banking very loosely, but an institution that, you know, essentially deals with money in some way. What do you think what, what role will they have in the adoption of Bitcoin? Do you see some kind of, you know, meeting of minds there or not? So I, I think, yes, I think they're, you know, that potential is there and, but you know, I think there has to be a discussion about, you know what, you know what, what's the base layer that's being used? You know, when we're talking about, you know, like Islamic contracts or you know what, what, what is an Islamic bank really doing? You know, it's, you know, it becomes, you know, an issue where you have to kind of like ultimately it leads to having to understand, you know, Fiat, Fiat at the base layer and you know it, you know it. You can have a lot of, you know, a lot of Islamic banking and Islamic finance contracts that are built on on Fiat, but you know, at at the root of it, at, you know, the soil is, you know, still still riba. And then, you know, when, when it comes to to Bitcoin, it requires you to kind of have a, you know, understanding of like, you know, this, this, this is the, the riba free option that, you know, can be used as a new way to build a new system that is more aligned Islamically. And do you don't have the issues of having to figure out, OK, we have the riba issue. How, how can we make a contract that emulates riba so that, but it's not technically riba in certain ways. And, you know, you just kind of get rid of that headache altogether when you're using Bitcoin. It's just, you know, when you have sound money, it just makes it so much simpler. Yeah, I also just want to mention real quick, you know, we don't come from like an Islamic finance or Islamic banking background. We Salah and I both studied engineering in college. But so you know, we're kind of coming at this from from an outsider perspective. But it, it does seem like, and you know, how does I think you've talked about this in other podcasts where you have to understand that having a sound money, especially one that has a fixed supply and with all of the other associated properties with Bitcoin makes it kind of a, a vehicle to allow people to be low time preference. So off the bat, you know, Fiat makes, makes people think in the short term and it makes people kind of like consume capital rather than accumulate capital for the long term. So I think like having a sound money will cause us to be more low time preference where we're thinking more about the future. And you know, as how that relates to Islamic finances. I think like Salah was saying, you know, I feel like a lot of the issues that are related to Islamic finance is just trying to make Fiat work in a, in a halal way. And I, I feel like a lot of time and a lot of ingenuity is wasted on trying to get that to work. But I feel like on a, on a Bitcoin standard, you know, you, you would actually be able to have true Islamic finance, like you would actually be able to have true like risk sharing contracts as, as, as, as opposed to like interest bearing contracts. And, and I think, you know, having having the the this anti riba property at the base layer will kind of help facilitate that and will help Islamic finance actually, like I think it'll, it'll help make it truly shine. So before I, I hand over to Ralph, I, I, I mean, it feels like you're saying that Islamic banking as it stands today, Islamic finance is just not compatible with Bitcoin as a monetary standard. It's just not going to happen. It's going to have to happen outside of the banking, the traditional Islamic finance system. Is that what you're saying? I mean, yeah, I don't, I don't see, you know, I think you actually talk about this in in your book. I think that that was actually when I, when I read your book Heavens Bankers, it kind of made me realize that like there's really no way to get Islamic banking to truly work within the Fiat system just because, you know, like, like we talked about before, I mean, it has the proof of riba algorithm in the base layer. So like there's there's just really no way to get any kind of Islamic finance contracts to actually work on top of a riba based layer. So yeah. Very interesting, I wanted to go back. I've been thinking about the term you use anti riba and please correct me if I'm mistaken but I think there's like a spectrum. So you have gold. If I were to put it on a pendulum it will be in the middle. It is halal. It's a Islamic form of money. To the left, I would put Fiat, which is exponentially more riba over time. And we've seen that with the proliferation of derivative markets, derivative markets of derivative markets, et cetera, where there's basically nothing really sound about. It's just fake money on top of fake money on top of fake money. And on the far right, the way I see it is Bitcoin, similar to the term Talib uses anti fragile and in this case it's anti riba. So over time on a Bitcoin standard money society and all that will become more moral and moral and moral because it's not just neutral, it is actually due to its fixed supply and it's certain criteria pushing the world into less usury, more transparency, more fairness in the system, more symmetrical distribution of, you know, outcomes when it comes to business dealings, etcetera, versus A1 sided play similar to what we have now with the banking system. Do you think that would be an accurate description? I mean, I'm just bandwagoning off of your turn. I've been thinking about it anti Reba and I thought about anti fragile and I found it such an amazing book because the more you attack Bitcoin, it seems the stronger it gets and the more people have control and it empowers the people at that level. And anti Reba seems to empower morality. Islamic finance, Muslims and not just Muslims. I'm a non-muslim, for example, but I am a Christian practitioner and a lot of the things that I am learning about through Islamic finance between you guys, Harris, Saifuddin, anyone who talks about if you were to replace the term Islamic finance, I would put in ethical and moral finance. I mean, that's what it is to me from, and I've heard that from a lot of my Christian friends that have been watching this. It just makes sense. It's just a more moral and ethical system. So the term antiruba is quite amazing. So is there something that I got off or something that you'd like? I think. I think you hit hit, hit, hit it on the head. I mean, it's, it's, it is kind of, you know, the, the anti the anti fiats, you know, on the opposite end where you know, with Fiat, you kind of have to, you're forced to kind of, you know, work the hamster wheel to try to keep the value of your money. Like you have to work, you know, an additional job to try to figure out how to invest your money so that you have value for the future. Whereas with Bitcoin, you just focus on your job and then you just save in Bitcoin and, and people that are new to Bitcoin, you know, would kind of take take a step back in like, whoa, you know, you're talking about this, this crypto stuff. And you know, that's that just is, you know, very speculative. And, you know, they kind of associate, you know, Bitcoin with cryptocurrency and they think, you know, high frequency, like trading or day trading. And, you know, and, and we're trying to explain that, you know, the, the high type preference activities of, you know, trading cryptocurrencies back and forth. You know, that's or NFTS or, you know, you know, launching a coin that you know, is, is, you know, interesting for, you know, a few months and then people forget about it. You know, that those are the things that we're trying to get away from to kind of explain, you know, that all of that stuff tends to be, you know, that doesn't accrue value over the long term. It's it's 0 sum. You know, when, when you're day trading, you know what, not sure what the benefit is of, you know, day trading crypto currencies is really going to help with, you know, for the rest of society, Whereas, you know, if you just have a focus on Bitcoin, you know, just just focus on your job and, you know, if you need to save something for the future, you know, saving Bitcoin, yes, it can be painful, you know, seeing the, the volatility day-to-day. But, you know, you know, as Muslims, we we have this understanding of like, you know, we do things for the long term. You know, our long term is, you know, the afterlife of Afira. And, you know, it's like, OK, well, if we can plan for Afira, maybe we can also plan for, you know, you know, 1020, thirty years from now. And to try to, you know, envision a monetary system that's, you know, that that's anti riba. And yeah, that's yeah. Yeah, just to piggyback off of that, I mean, I, I love the, the, the pendulum that that, that you talked about there, Ralph. I mean, I think, I think that's a very good way to frame it. I, you know, I, I didn't mention this before, but you know, I, I think in trying to envision a Bitcoin standard, I think it makes sense that it would just naturally lead to more of a profit sharing type revenue generation rather than trying to get it through interest bearing loans. So you know, if, if, if you just look at like an interest bearing transaction on a Bitcoin standard, now, you know, for an, and anyone that's complaining, that's like, oh, bitcoins, not anti riba because you can actually, you know, make a, make a riba contract on, on Bitcoin. Like, duh, of course you could do that on money. But the reason why we say it's anti RIBA is because if you are going to make an interest bearing transaction, interest bearing loan on on Bitcoin, I mean, it's, it's a very risky thing because if you end up not being able to have the loan paid back to you, there's no like FDIC or any, any other bank that's going to be able to bail you out. So inherently doing an interest based loan is already very risky, as it should be. And I feel like it's going to be very risky on a Bitcoin standard where as you know, the the, the other, the other way to actually, you know, make or I guess make use of capital on a Bitcoin standard is you would actually engage in a profit sharing mechanism where you actually have to know what the investment is like. You actually have to know like you're not just putting your Bitcoin up and generating some revenue from interest. You're actually going to be putting Bitcoin into a project where you intimately know what that project is. And you're going to know whether it makes a profit or not. And if it doesn't make a profit, that's, that's higher than what would be if you had just accumulated that Bitcoin, then it's not going to be a profitable venture. Again, as it should be. I think you know what one, one thing that I've kind of realized about going on a Bitcoin standard is that initially you're, you're not going to have as many like just in investments that are going to be made because people are going to be more, more discerning in what they will give their Bitcoin to and what, what, what projects they want to fund. Because, you know, with, with Fiat, you're kind of incentivized to just throw your money here, throw it there. It's like, Oh yeah, this, this, this project sounds good. And especially in low interest rates environments where like you just kind of throw money at, at whatever because you're, you're on this hamster wheel where you're trying to beat inflation. So automatically you're in this high time preference thinking where like all, all you're thinking about, it's just the revenue that you can generate and you're more likely to be incentivized to go into interest bearing loans. Whereas on a Bitcoin standard, we feel like it's gonna naturally just just an environment is gonna emerge where you're you're gonna end up having more profit sharing contracts and more profit sharing agreements in in in order to make make use of capital or generate profits. So. Interesting. Yeah, I think before I turn it over back. Oh, sorry, there's a bit of a delay. Yes. Sorry about that, Harris. Yeah, I think many Muslims missed this point and, you know, in getting caught up in the FUD of Bitcoin. And you know, we'll talk about, we'll knock off the FUD later on. We'll talk about volatility and we've talked about intrinsic value and energy usage and all this kind of, so they come up with all these reasons why not Bitcoin. But when you explain to them what actually the investment decisions that we make today on a Fiat standard are dumb investment decisions because we're forced almost to throw our money away at bad projects because money is devaluing. So if you had a money that didn't devalue, you are incentivized to make long term sustainable decisions. So your investment process is a much higher quality. That's not to say they won't be rib eye if you have a Bitcoin standard as you say. I mean, you know, human beings are human beings, They'll find ways to to charge people interest and they may well throw money at bad projects. But you have a much higher degree of incentive to invest wisely when you think for the long term, when you're nudged in the direction of thinking in the long term. Anyway, sorry Ralph, back to you. Oh, no, no worries. That was quite interesting. Two points real fast and I'll flip it over back to you, Harris, I know you have a lot to talk about in this conversation. Two things. Your comment about profit sharing, one thing that you find in Bitcoin that you can't find in Fiat and that says a lot, at least to me, is you know you can hold your Bitcoin, but if you lose your Bitcoin or even you can take it with you to the grave, literally. And in doing so, you are benefiting everyone who holds Bitcoin, the ultimate charity case, because you're cutting down on why. So I mean, even if you don't have children or etcetera, you can just take it with you. And then everyone in the world that holds Bitcoin will see, you know, the benefit of that. So that's one thing that I find, you know, inherently good that you can do something like that, whereas you can take as many dollars as you want. The next day there's going to be a trillion of them that are printed newly and fresh and minted. You know, so that's that's very interesting thing to me. Question for you guys just to shift gears a little bit. So you know, the Bitcoin measure is you guys have your own community. You work with a lot of people, a lot of scholars unsure variety of ages and you've been working to kind of approach the scholars themselves. How do they approach the Islamic jurisprudence with regards to Bitcoin? Like how do they go about, you know, studying, viewing Bitcoin? Like where do they start off? Let's take a moment to talk about On Ramp Mino. As a driving force behind the new frontier On Ramp, Mino offers best in class education and advisory services for Bitcoin accumulation, strategy and custody. Our expert team specializes in crafting tailored Bitcoin strategies and providing recommendations that ensure your assets are both secure and accessible. Book a consultation with Anramina today to take the first step towards securing your financial future with Bitcoin. Visit ourwebsite@anramina.com to learn more and schedule your consultation. And now let's get back to the show. I mean, you know, I guess like in terms of looking at it through, you know, Islamic jurisprudence or fit, you know, they, they, they tend to look at it kind of, you know, they, they, they, they start out like looking at like what money is or like what, how, what, what money is supposed to be. I oftentimes feel like, you know, even using that approach, it doesn't really get at to the heart of the issue because I mean, like, you know, I don't want to downplay the role of fit because that's like super important. But I mean, you know, you don't need to have like that deep of an analysis to at least know that like the current Fiat system is based inherently on riba. Like, like, I think that's, that's a very easy thing to, to, to make, to make the case for. And, you know, I, I think, you know, in, in, in conversations that I've had with certain scholars, I was recently at a conference in, in Baltimore at the IGNA conference or the Islamic Circle of North America. I think that's what that stands for. And I've actually talked with a few scholars at that conference. I had a friend that like knew all of these different scholars and he like dragged me. He's like, hey, this guy wants to talk to you about Bitcoin. So like he dragged me like in front of a bunch of scholars. Some scholars were like very receptive. They were like, oh, like, you know, they had no idea that like Fiat was completely entrenched in riba. But I, I found that like most of, and I, I hate to say this, but I feel like most of the response that I got was just like, they didn't really care that like the current Fiat system is completely entrenched in riba. Like, and, and I, that makes me like really sad because like when you actually read the Quran and you know, you read the Hadith about riba, like it is a very serious grave sin. Like in the Quran, Allah declares war on the person that engages in riba. Like no other sin has this, like this is obviously something that's really, really heinous. And you know, like when I'm, when I'm trying to explain that to, to other, other Muslims, it's just regular Muslims or they don't have to be scholars. They don't really, they're not like they're not compelled to actually act on that. They're just like, oh, OK, that's that, that's interesting. I didn't know that, but like, I don't want their reaction to be that. I want them to like be panicked a little bit. I want them to be like, Oh my God, I didn't know that. What can we do about this? So you know, but ham did a lot like so when, when we were at the IGNA conference, me and our, our friends, Subhan, we gave this talk and I titled it Bitcoin, the anti Riba monetary protocol. I, I gave it a fancy title, then Masha Allah, like dude, we had like over 100 people show up to the room and the room only had like a 7080 people capacity. The room was jam packed. Like there were people that were like lining up outside to come in because I guess they really wanted to hear this talk. So, you know, I, I gave the talk and then like, after I gave the talk, there was a line of people that were coming up to me that wanted to ask questions. And the question, the main question that I got was Abdullah, how do I buy Bitcoin? Like, like I, I guess maybe I, I delivered the, the, the, the message in a very clear way. But sorry, that completely derailed to the original question you were asking about Phil. But I just wanted to mention that, like, it doesn't take much to understand. At the very least, just understand that the current Fiat system is completely entrenched in riba and that like, yes, you can use Phil to, I guess, you know, see if Bitcoin is halal or Haram, you know, in a technical way. But at the end of the day, we're really only left with two alternatives. We either go back to a gold standard or we use. This Bitcoin thing because like clearly, you know, this Islamic, this Islamic finance, Islamic banking circus that we've been trying to make work on a, on a Fiat standard is clearly not working. I mean that there are ways to make it work, but at the end of the day, it's just not something that's viable to do. So the only thing we could do is either go back to a gold standard or use Bitcoin. And I think that just kind of lays it out very plainly that like in order for gold to work, do you, you have the only way to really get gold to work is you like the, the, the Khalifa has to come back and he has to like institute gold for all of these Muslim countries to use it. That's going to be the only way. And to be honest, that just seems very unrealistic if you ask me. And compared to Bitcoin, that Bitcoin just seems like it just it just seems like the very common sense of approach to solving the 300 and something trillion dollar riba problem that we have going on in today's world. And, yeah, so like when I speak to Muslims, you know, they they say, yeah, that the system is definitely entrenched in riba. And, you know, there's not much we can do about it. You know, let's just, you know, sit, sit back and, you know, maybe wait for, you know, the the prophesized, you know, Mehdi, to return to, you know, set everything right. And you know, I'm listening to this and I'm like, you know, the, you know, this, this, this is not the Islam that I know. You know, we're not supposed to just, you know, oh, there's a problem and we're just gonna sit, sit back and wait for the problem to get solved by someone. You know what, what what are we doing to be proactive about, you know, taking down the system? And you know, it's it's I I tried to like draw an analogy from from history. So, you know, as long prophesized, you know, from Prophet Muhammad Sallalla audio said to them that the Muslims would, you know, one day conquer Constantinople. And I like to bring up this story because it it illustrates, you know, how did we had a certain mindset when you know, Muslims, you know, you know, they, they, they, they tried for centuries to, you know, fulfill the prophecy of, you know, taking over Constantinople. And, and you know, the, the, the, the ruler at the time was Mohammed Feta. The, the second he, you know, was very forward thinking. And he, you know, he like his forefathers, you know, they wanted to be the one to conquer Constantinople because, you know, they want to be the one to fulfill the prophecy. And and you know it, they couldn't, they couldn't takedown the the walls of Constantinople. So that's like for centuries, you know, they couldn't get past the walls of Constantinople. It was just, you know, the walls were too high, too thick, and you didn't have really a way of taking the walls down, laying siege never really worked. And you know that Mohammed the second the Sultan, he was approached by by a non-muslim. And I like to emphasize that this this man was non-muslim. His name was Orban. And he presented his idea for a new, new technology like it because the people are already playing around with, you know, gunpowder at this time. But he would want to take it to the next level and say, Oh, I have, you know, I have this design idea for cannons. And, you know, he he Orban initially brought the idea to the Byzantines at the time, but they were not really interested. They had other things to worry about. But then, you know, when Muhammad Sultan Muhammad saw the, you know, the plans and realizing, oh, you have you, you're bringing this to me. And you're he just want, he's just, you know, he's he's he's a technologist. You know, he or Bond just wants to build his cannons. And I'm at the second he is like, OK, I'll fund you. You're not getting funding from anywhere else, but I'm going to fund you and you're going to help me bring down these walls for Constantinople. And, you know, there was, you know, I don't know for certain because, you know, I'm not, I'm not a historian, but I'm sure, you know, the thought process was wasn't oh, is, is this is this halal? Is this compatible, you know, with, you know, the old times or anything like that? No, he just, he saw the best technology and he just went for it. And that's how he ended up taking down the walls of Constantinople. And you know, and even if it was developed by a non-muslim and other, you know, you know, FUD pieces, you know, well, you know, Bitcoin was maybe created by this Satoshi guy. We don't know who he is, probably a non-muslim. We don't know what his motives are. And you know, and you know, when I hear that, it's like, well, it doesn't really matter. You know, we as Muslims should, you know, be forward thinking. And if we see the best technology to bring down the walls of the Arriba system, we need to jump on it. So let's use it. Let's bring down these walls. I'm. Just we're coming back to, I mean, we're talking about actions rather than, you know, just pontificating about Bitcoin and hoping Muslims come around to it. I was interested the love that people came up to at the end of the session, Igna, and said, how do I get into it? So what do you tell Muslims who never come across this before? Maybe they say to you, wow, this looks like very techie. I'm not a techie person. I, it's very confusing to me. What do I do? What do you say to them? So you know, when, when people came up to me, luckily I had a few copies of the Bitcoin standard with me because I, I kind of anticipated something like that would happen, but I only had like 3 copies with me. But my, my, my first thing is, you know, I think it, it takes a lot of education because like, I think if you try to get Muslims to get into Bitcoin without understanding it, like Salah was saying, you know, they look the, the, the volatility is like hard to stomach if you don't actually understand what it is that you're buying. So at the very least, like you actually need to be educated on it. And unfortunately that education is like it, it, it requires reading, it requires like watching YouTube videos. I mean, right now that's, that's just that the only way to educate is to actually get down and, and actually learn it. So, you know, for, for those Muslims that were asking me like, how do I buy Bitcoin, I just tell them, look, go read the Bitcoin standard while you're reading the Bitcoin standard, like go open up an, an exchange, an account on an exchange. Typical, you know, you should try to go for a Bitcoin only exchange, which you know, I, I recommended in, in the US, we, we like to use coin bits because you know, one, one of one of the, one of our friends that we know here in the US is they, they these, these, these Muslim brothers, they opened up coin bits. So it's, it's, it's a Bitcoin only exchange. And you know, I, I, I tell them, open up an account on coin bits and just start like, you know, putting in a little bit from your paycheck. You don't have to like go all in on this. Like, I'm not asking for Muslims to completely like ditch their, their savings on their Fiat account and go completely into Bitcoin. I think this is going to be a gradual thing where as you're putting in, you know, a few dollars here and there, you're going to start looking at the Bitcoin price. You're going to start looking at seeing it's going up and down. You're going to be like, oh, why is Bitcoin going up and down? And then you're going to start reading about it. And then, you know, I tell them, like, while you're doing that, also read things like the Bitcoin standard, read the Fiat standard, read these books and watch these YouTube videos and, and, you know, consume these podcasts. And while you're consuming that, like it'll start to click. And then they'll, I, you know, that's, that's, that's how I got into it. Like I didn't go convert all of my Fiat into Bitcoin on day one. It, it, it takes a while. And that's what I recommend to Muslims that want to get into Bitcoin is just, you know, first of all, open up an exchange, start reading about it. Put again, a little bit of your paycheck into it every week or every month and just just go from there. By the way, just as an aside, you may have heard in the last 24 hours or so that Coinbase has shut down the accounts of many Palestinian organizations. Binance it's. Quite Binance. Yeah, my apologies, Binance. Yeah. And, you know, this is so there's a bit of a buzz, again, in the Muslim community. And again, a process of education needs to take place. What do you say to Muslims who say, well, you know, your money's not safe, It can be hacked. You know, you are. You know, you're at risk of criminals or censorship or manipulation by third parties. What do you say to that? We say yes, that that is definitely the risk if you're not doing things properly. And you know, that kind of gets back to the education angle. You know, you, you know, want to be holding your own keys. So if you're using an exchange, once you get a, you know, a certain amount of Bitcoin, you know, let's say it's like, you know, 500 or $1000 worth. You know, you want to have regular intervals where you're moving funds off the exchange into a ideally like a hardware wallet. And you know, we want Muslims to understand that, you know, you know, with Bitcoin, you, you actually have censorship resistance. You, you don't, you're not going to be in a position where if you're holding your own keys, you know, your funds can be frozen or your funds can be confiscated. You, you'll always, as long as you have access to the Internet, you're going to be able to move your Bitcoin and do what you want with your Bitcoin. And yeah, so it's it, it was a sad story to hear that, you know, you know, the, the Palestinians don't have a lot already. And you know, this is something we didn't, didn't mention earlier, but you know, Abdullah and I, we, we, we grew up in Palestine. We grew up in Bethlehem and we lived there for a few years in our childhood. And, you know, Palestinians don't have much into here that, you know, finance just confiscated the funds of all Palestinians. I mean, that's that's really sad news. And, you know, we're we're, you know, that kind of just makes, makes it more imperative for us to educate Muslims. Like, you know, if you use an exchange, get your funds off the exchange, don't leave them on the exchange. And, you know, and, and we would say that also you don't want to use other things like, you know, Tether, if you can avoid using things like Tether and alt coins, you know, there's, there's always kind of room for those things to be censored and to, you know, be controlled by the developers. And you don't want to be in a situation where, you know, you get censored from that angle either. Like, like, if you want true censorship resistance, you know, go with Bitcoin, don't go with anything else that could be censored. And, you know, and I think, yeah, we really just have to educate them on it. Yeah, and I just just talking about the censorship resistant aspect. I mean, I think this is a a wonderful property that Bitcoin has especially is because like once once that transaction is sent and once it's confirmed, I mean there's there's no one that can like reverse that transaction. I mean Bitcoin is a truly like censorship resistant money. And I feel like, you know, as like if if you're if you know, if you're a Palestinian or you know, if you're, if you're Muslim in another place where you're being oppressed. I mean, this, this is a very good use case where you can actually like you, you can leave with your money by memorizing 12 or 24 words. And you you can take your money with you wherever you want. And no one can take that away from you. So, yeah, it was kind of sad hearing about by Nets just just completely just taking all the Palestinian funds. I mean, I guess they, they, they must have done it through like looking at their phone numbers or something, or like I, I, I don't know if they do KYC or whatever, but like, that's just, I mean, that's, that's like really evil. And that's, that's why I don't like using a lot of these crypto exchanges. I, I think that's, that's, you know, another reason why you should play it safe, use a reputable Bitcoin only exchange. And like Salah was saying, I mean once once you have an amount take it out, put it into your into cold storage and keep keep your keys safe. And just any. Recommendations. Sorry, any recommendations you can make for for making donations to Relief Aid on the ground in Gaza? Yeah, there's, there's so there his, there's this guy, his name is Yusuf Mahmoud. That's that's on Twitter and he's also on Noster right now, where you can actually send Bitcoin to someone that will receive it in Gaza and they will actually use the, that Bitcoin to, you know, they, they trade it for the local currency. But then using, using the local currency, which by the way, a lot of other people don't know, but like the local currency, the Palestinians is the Israeli shekel. So like using, using the local currency, he can actually buy food and water and other, other materials and supplies for, for any, anyone that's like lost their homes or is not able to feed themselves. So even right now, like you could actually use Bitcoin to help Palestinians. I mean, you know, we, we talk, you know, the, the main use case that I use Bitcoin for is obviously holding. I mean, I have 5 kids, I'm thinking about the future. But they're, you know, as, as a Muslim, you can actually use Bitcoin right now to help your fellow Muslims that are in Palestine by donating Bitcoin. You're not going to be able to do that from any, you know, crypto exchange that could censor you. You're not going to be able to do using Venmo or PayPal or whatever, but you can't do that using a censorship resistant permission list protocol that's called Bitcoin. So yes, you can actually send Bitcoin to Palestine right now and help the Palestinians. And we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll even put that on our, on our profile regularly. We'll, we'll actually retweet that. So, and, and, and the guy is really great because he like puts pictures and videos of like all of the food that, that he's acquired and he's passing them out to like all the hungry kids and all, all the hungry people there. So, you know, this isn't like some scam or anything like it's, it's, it's legit and it's happening on the ground and you can use your Bitcoin to make a difference now. Yeah, and and and to also, you know, extrapolate from there. It's not, you know, just helping Muslims in, in Palestine, but you know, any, you know, person in needs, you know, like, for example, if if there is an orphanage, you know, that needed funds and you want to, you know, give your charity to that orphanage. And if they accept Bitcoin, then you have the ability to send Bitcoin directly from your wallet to their wallet. And I know this is something that is something that kind of, you know, plagues the, the, the, the charity scene, You know, when it comes to Muslim organizations where, you know, the organization, they end up keeping egregious amounts of the charity they receive for themselves. And, you know, Islamically, I think you, you are allowed to keep a certain small percentage as, you know, someone who helps distribute charity. But, you know, I think last year there were reports of charity organizations that keep, you know, 20-30, forty, 50% of all the charity that they collect before they give it to the people in need. And you know, now, now with Bitcoin, so not just as a way of saving, it's not just savings technology, but now, you know, we have a way of sending directly to people in need. And you don't have to worry about a middle man that's going to take a big cut of your funds when that you're trying to give to the people in need. That's amazing. To add to that, we spoke about the custody component and how it's important to, you know, not your keys, not your Bitcoin. One factor or one idea I want to touch on as well, giving you guys are also based in the US and you talked to a lot of Muslims based in the US. What do you say to them when they look for easy exposure through the ETFs which are marketed non-stop? Do they confuse it with real Bitcoin? Because there's clearly a religious differentiation between direct ownership and non direct ownership? Is that something that comes up in your conversation? Do people just point at the ETF and say this is just the way I'm going to do? It's just much easier that way. Luckily, we, we haven't had that issue so far. But you know, I, I do want Muslims to understand that like owning the Bitcoin ETF doesn't mean you actually own the underlying Bitcoin. And you know that, that, that could, you know, that, that that could also be something that's actually UN Islamic where like you are buying something that you don't actually own because like property rights are like really, really super important in, in, in, in Islam. And you know, if you're buying the ETF and you don't actually hold or you, you don't have access to the underlying asset, then like you don't actually own anything. So like it's not really like a valid transaction. So, and, and The thing is, is like, I don't, I don't see the point of owning the ETF when you can actually own the asset itself. I mean, even if you're, if you're a company, and especially if you're not a very big one, I mean, there's nothing stopping you from like actually just buying Bitcoin and you know, it's adding it to your balance sheet. I mean, plenty, plenty of companies and organizations already do that even today. So I, I think owning something like the ETF, it's just a way of, of like it's, it's really no different than Fiat where like you actually don't own the underlying asset. And it's, it's just, it's just like a, a claim to, to, to nothing basically. Amazing. One thing before I transition it back to you, Harris, since we're talking about the custody component, you know, self custody, multi signature custody, all these nice custody models, you know, they are relatively complex for the average individual. And there's a problematic aspect, which is the inheritance, because one individual will spend hours, hundreds of hours trying, testing, and then the expectation is that their children would inherit the Bitcoin. What are your views on that? For starters, I think inheritance is important in all cultures, especially within the Middle East as well. But do you perceive a world where institutions will self custody, where high net worth individual will self custody? Or do you perceive a different form of custody that might come out? So I, I think, I think you're going to have a mixture. I mean, I think you'll have, you know, Muslims that, you know, self custody, but I think there is also, you know, definitely a lot of opportunity to offer different custody solutions. So when Abdullah was talking about, you know, the ETF, you know, you, if you buy into the ETF, you know, you don't know which specific amount of Bitcoin on the blockchain is yours. And you know, and you don't know if ET the ETF company in the background is, you know, lending that out to someone else to, you know, do you know, leverage trading, you know, involving RIBA, you know, and your funds being are being used to, you know, help fund, you know, activities that you're not really, you know, want to participate in. Whereas you know, if you have a multi sig solution or you know you have multiple keys controlling a certain amount of Bitcoin, you can have you know, you can have the situation where you have your amount of Bitcoin visible on the blockchain and you can have those keys distributed among various institutions. And that that provides a powerful way for you to have like a direct legal agreement with each of those companies where you have this, this kind of legal contract in place like I'm trusting you to hold. This one key of mine and you have this same legal contract with other entities and that way and and at all times you can see the Bitcoin on the blockchain. So you kind of know which which address is holding your Bitcoin and you know you know what specific amount of Bitcoin is yours. So like, you know, you're expecting the property rights where you know, like this amount of Bitcoin is, is for Ahmed and you know, he can, he can have the security of multiple organizations securing his funds. Especially, you know, if you're, if you're dealing with an organization, a family office or high net worth individual, you know that that that can be a very good solution. And you know, if something you know when, when, when it's their time to when they pass, they can pass, they can have that solution, you know, work in their favor in terms of offering like making sure that Bitcoin gets handed down to their heirs. Full disclosure, Salah doesn't work for on ramp because you just described that. You just described multi institution custody by on ramp. Like maybe we should work for on ramp. Yeah, but I totally agree. And Harris and I have been working through the region here to try to bring that to the region because, you know, the risk sharing, the reduction of counterparty risk, removing single points of failure, all that aligns with Muslim traditions, Islamic traditions and just common sense traditions. I mean, it's kind of crazy that 80 to 85% of all the ETFs are custodied by a single custodian, which is coin based prime. This is a recipe for disaster. It's like we haven't learned from FTX, we haven't learned from Mt Gox. So hopefully in the future we'll see these multi institution, multi jurisdictional custody models become more prevalent. And that's why we're here and that's why we're working towards that. I did this. I did a survey of about 2000 client net worth investors and wealth managers about 3-4 years ago in the Middle East, actually globally, but the Middle East was a large segment of that survey. And it was very interesting that one of the biggest issues, one of the big most important factors for these high net with individuals and family offices, succession planning and inheritance. And I'm sure we've all heard multiple occurrences in the Middle East where a in a large merchant family, the patriarch has passed away. And, you know, the next thing you know, the siblings are squabbling over, you know, who gets what. And there's no clear plan in place. And so I think that this will be a sort of a new phenomenon now, this idea that, you know, where is the Bitcoin and how will it be split up? I, I think that's going to be doubly important in the Middle East where you have these specific issues, especially in the Gulf. Anyway, changing the subject slightly, I appreciate that we are, you know, some way into our podcast and you know, we, we could talk all, but I, I want to just try and focus on a few quick, quick fire issues. And Bitcoin modulus, of course, is, you know, one of its primary aims is education of the community. And let's address some of the FUD, right? We've already talked about intrinsic value. We've talked about sort of digital property. Is it real? Is it not real? These are things that we've addressed through that particular hadith that you mentioned, Abdullah. And let's talk about fixed supply. What do you say to Muslims who say, oh, you need to have a variable supply so you can deal with crises? Yeah, that's, that's definitely more of a, of like, I guess I would classify it as economic FUD because I, I find that a lot of this type of FUD really kind of stems from a lack of understanding of economics, which like, by the way, I mean, if you open up like any Islamic economics textbook, I mean, one of the things that like I, I just, I'm, I'm kind of actually too scared to go like really deep in this rabbit hole. But like, if you open up any like modern Islamic economics textbooks, you find that it's just like littered with Keynesian propaganda, which is like really worrying. But I, I didn't know like how bad it was until like, I, I had just like, you know, opened up a few textbooks And I've, I've, I've made a few posts about it on, on my Twitter account. But like you know concerning the fixed supply, I think it it stems from that same. Leading voices, I mean, some of the people that everybody looks up to and say, oh, this is the greatest economist and this is really important Islamic theologian in this subject. And they're repeating, repeating the same propaganda. It's just amazing to me. Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's, it's really quite worrying because I mean, I, I, I like to think that, you know, Islamic economics is like a thing that makes sense because it is Islamic, but it just seems like as, as, as a modern concept, it's been completely hijacked by, by Keynesianism. And there's like no other way to view economics unless it's from that Keynesian viewpoint. And you know, this fixed supply thing is, I feel like it's a downstream issue of that Keynesianism being in Islamic economics where, you know, people will make the fun that like, oh, Bitcoin has a fixed supply. So you know, it's, it's, it's not going to be able to lubricate the economy or, or whatever other like buzzword they use. But like underneath all of those buzzwords, like their contention makes no sense. You do not need to increase the supply of the money in order to have more goods to be created. Like it's, it's just, what do you think about it? Logically, creating more monetary units is not going to is not going to make things come into existence. Now, you know, there is the issue of divisibility. So like you might need more monetary units if you have something that's not very divisible because you actually need to have enough units for people to transact in. But the thing with Bitcoin is that it has a fixed supply, but it's perfectly divisible because it's digital. So I, I, I think, I think a lot of, a lot of Muslims that kind of engage in that flood really, really missed that point because they've been already automatically programmed to think like, oh, the, the supply needs to increase in order in, in order to have like, you know, all, all of these different investments. But really, if you take a step back, realize that actually having the supply be fixed is probably is actually the optimal way to have a monetary system, provided that it's perfectly divisible, because creating new monetary units does not make new goods. Yeah. It's just. Max and just exactly, exactly. And another aspect is historically, you know, governments have, you know, always been involved in money. So not just, you know, Fiat bring about money, but we're I was talking about like gold and silver. You kind of needed a neutral or as neutral as can get party to, you know, standardize the coinage and to, you know, put their stamp and say, you know, this is this many grams of of of gold or silver in a coin and have it uniform and standardized so that it can be used for trade. So I think, you know, there's also this kind of historical, you know, bias, like where you kind of have an idea of like the government has to be involved with money. And in the past, I think maybe that was necessary for standardizing the coins of gold and silver. The, the awesome thing about Bitcoin is that it's, it's already standardized out-of-the-box. So, you know, the government does not need to play a role in, in, in, in the money supply. That was just an artifact of kind of needing to standardize gold and silver. But now with Bitcoin, it's already standardized. Don't need a third party or government to involved in the process. Yeah, yeah, that that's the government saying, saying minting and verification. That's not a government saying This is Money and we say so. So it's a complete 2 completely different things. OK, next FUD energy usage, you know, Muslims will say, oh, you big pointers are destroying the environment and you know, you're not sustainable. And what is what is this proof of work? Why do we need it? Explain. Well, so I, first of all, I, I, I like to say, you know, if, if you think Bitcoin uses too much energy, I, I like to ask the question back. Too much energy compared to what? Because if you compare it to the Fiat system, Fiat actually requires massive amounts of energy. And it so happens that it requires actually, I would say it requires human lives. I mean, the fact that we have like all of these wars that that have happened since the creation of the Federal Reserve is no coincidence, as Ron Paul famously said. But you know, the, the once, once you understand what actually backs Fiat money, it's it's this monopoly over issuing riba based loans. And in order to keep control of that monopoly, you have to go to war with other countries. And you know, it inherently it's going to be very destabilizing. But another thing that I like to bring up is that like, look, we, we believe that Bitcoin has a chance of bringing down the riba based monetary system that's global. We're talking about a 300 something trillion, $1,000,000 RIBA problem. I'm not sure what the global amount of debt is, but like if you think that like it's not going to use a lot of energy to dismantle that, I don't know what to say. I think you're incredibly naive. I mean, if you want to take down the global RIBA based financial system, it's going to have to use a lot of energy and you're going to have to be okay with that. And another aspect is, you know, just kind of ask, ask someone, you know, you worked, you worked for so many years at your job, you know, you spent so much time and energy, you know, building up your wealth. Wouldn't you want a vehicle that also requires, you know, time and energy to store your wealth in? I mean, if, if if you put your, you know, wealth in a system that's, you know, didn't require much time and energy to, to make, then it it, you know, that that means you just can make another one and another one and another one. So you're, you're going to be storing your wealth in something that's not, not scarce at all. So, yeah, it's you definitely need, you want time and energy in, in, in, in a money system that you know, for you, you want that. That's how you can preserve your your wealth over time. Right, so we've got energy means security and proof of stake leads to perpetual war. Now next FUD volatility, Muslims will say, oh, but this is Macey or it's gambling or it Qatar, it's uncertainty. You know you're just gambling on an exchange with these magic money coins. Bit of that. I mean, I think there's different approaches to attacking that, but I think at at the at the very start of it, you kind of have to realize that you're measuring that volatility against something that's inherently volatile, which is the dollar. So like you're, you're inherently using Fiat to measure the volatility, but that measurement stick that you're using is actually very volatile. So like it, it, it, it doesn't really make sense when you talk about it being volatile. But you know, there's also this other approach where, you know, you have to understand that Bitcoin is this new emergent money that's, that's, that's monetizing from zero. Like of course it's going to be volatile. I mean, new technologies don't come in and you have a, you have a steady adoption curve that goes up like this. I mean, any new technology that comes on the scene is inherently going to have a very volatile adoption process. A new money is going to be no different. Actually, I would say a new money would would inherently be a very volatile process for adoption. So of course you're going to have it going up and down. The fact that it's going up and down shows it's giving you information that people are buying and selling it. I mean, if, if you didn't want volatility on the Bitcoin network, you would have to have a third party that controls who can buy and who can sell. And that's not any different from what Fiat is. And we see the, the, the destruction that Fiats caused when central banks attempt to suppress that volatility that manifesting down the line in huge in, in, in bigger boom, boom, bust cycles. So those those are those are the two points I like to bring up to to people that bring up that volatile volatility fund. And good. OK. So we can conclude there's two? Types of Vol. Oh yeah, just wanted to add to that. So there's two types of Vol too, right? There's good Vol and there's bad Vol. Well, Bitcoin is asymmetrically leaning towards the good fall. So the volatility is actually a feature because as the price goes up, more eyes are on it, it collapses new entrants and then cycle rinses and repeats constantly. So every wave of adoption is followed by a collapse and at that point new entrants go in and then you know you have more wealth created for those people. So I think when you look at this volatility metric from portfolio point of view, it's really asymmetrical to the upside and that's a feature. It's not normally distributed like other traditional assets. It's really to the far right. So there is no better bet in terms of you know long term store of value when it comes to asset classes. Well, I think we've hit the mark. Is there something Harris you want to touch on before we start closing the slide? No, that's good. I think we've touched on a lot of things there and I'm looking up to looking forward to following up with you guys. I think there's there are some fantastic things that you're going to come out with. Yeah. And before we wrap it up, just, you know, point us in the right direction, tell us what you're working on. We know there's the book that's on the horizon. We're excited about that. But is there something specific that you'd like to share with our audience? And please, we'll have everything in the links and in the description. So anything you can think of, just send them our way. But is there something specific other than the book that you're working on that you'd like to share? So it's, it's, it's still a work in progress. But you know, this goes back to the earlier question of, you know, how do we engage, you know, scholars and kind of get, get more eyes, more eyes from the Muslim community focused on Bitcoin. So one of the things that we're working on is going to be a grants program where, you know, we offer a grant to a scholar or a student of knowledge or, you know, one of the Muslim thought leaders, you know, if they are interested in Bitcoin, they can apply to our grant program. And, you know, we're working with many other Muslims within our organization to try to get funds raised. And this would be a way for us to, you know, provide them with educational material, a hardware wallet and some Bitcoin to get started. And, you know, I think that would be a very good way to kind of make, you know, get get more of the Muslim community looking at Bitcoin, studying Bitcoin and seeing what it's really about. And I think, you know, we can get more people, you know, into the Bitcoin movement this way through the Muslim community. That's amazing. Please make sure to share the details on that one. That's ready both. Yeah, yeah. That's coming out hopefully in next week or two. Amazing. That's pretty close by the time we launch this episode. So perfect timing maybe so well, that's it guys. I have nothing else to add. I just want to say thank you to the both of you. This was such a good conversation. Really appreciate you guys being here. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's been great. Thank. You pleasure to have you. Thanks for listening. If you found the content valuable, please make sure to share with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Before we finish, a quick reminder that the content provided is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. 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