While the subject of NFTs themselves have been discussed, I am wondering about owning crypto the token itself rather than the NFT. While NFTs themselves can be sharia compliant or Non-compliant, what about owing the token?
Chilliz has NBA top shots, Ecomi has VEVE and they sell NFTs of super man, Batman, ghostbuster, etc…
How do we deal with these tokens? The technology itself has many uses. It can be used for creating An NFT of your ID, drivers licence, passport, basically anything that you want to protect from being fraudulently copied. While the main focus now is on digital art, collectables, etc, but the scope of what you can do with technology goes much beyond the current craze.
As an investor, can I own and hold ecomi, chilliz, TVK, FLOW, etc tokens??
Please advise ASAP as I want to make sure my earnings are halal.
I can’t give a ruling. I would just say my personal opinion that I do not believe that NFTs are haram and the tokens are not haram to buy. However, I think it would depend what the tokens are used to buy. What kind of NFTs are they?
I did invest in ECOMI but I quickly sold it after I was not sure.
Please check:
My reason for not being sure if ECOMI was halal was based on the above statement that the NFTs have to have a purpose:
In-game items
NFTs for in-game items, computer-generated avatars and other game-related NFTs are something which do not reflect nor seem to align with the Shariah vision for investment in value-adding services and assets.
The Islamic jurists state that actions fall into one of the following three:
Reasonable purpose (Ghard Sahih) – anything beneficial for the worldly life or the afterlife. This is permissible and encouraged to perform.
Unreasonable purpose (Ghard Fasid) – anything negative or unconstructive for one’s worldly life and has no benefit for the afterlife. This is referred to as Lahw in the Islamic legal texts. This should be abstained from.
No purpose whatsoever (‘Abath) – anything done with no meaningful objective or reasonable outcome. This can be spurred by boredom, a lack of conscience and mental presence, or even ‘killing time’. This should be abstained from also[v].
The above principles apply to the gaming and entertainment industry. As such, for in-game NFTs, the following principles apply:
Any game which has no reasonable purpose, NFTs should not be purchased for such games.
Anything unlawful must be abstained from.
Individuals should consult local scholars about the different types of games and entertainment.
In the case of ECOMI, you use the token to buy collectibles from entertainment shows, movies, games, etc.
I sold my ECOMI because I was thinking the Shariah ruling might be that this type of investment should be abstained from or worse, could be haram.
I have to admit, this is an unusually strict opinion for myself. I do watch movies and shows. I do play games. It’s part of the culture I grew up with unfortunately. However, from the perspective of investment, I don’t want to risk my investment being haram or makruh.
As for whether ECOMI is a good investment, I think it is a great financial investment. The value is almost undoubtedly going to go up by a lot. As for the technology, it sounds really interesting and something I am into in video games (being able to unlock cool-looking special units in games). However, with NFTs, we’re talking about money being involved.
I also downloaded the Veve application which uses the OMI token. From what I found, most characters you can buy are permissible because they cover their Awrah or don’t have one to cover. So it cannot be said that all characters are haram based on 'Awrah.
@Mufti_Billal@Mufti_Faraz_Adam I didn’t want to tag you guys but I thought maybe you would be able to give some insight based on my research. Ignoring the issue of whether ECOMI is halal, because I know you cannot say.
My question is would it be halal to invest in an entertainment-related industry?
As a customer, I don’t think I would have any objection to investing in an NFT of a vehicle from a show and then have a virtual ‘showroom’ where I can show others what I have collected. Is this something that could be haram and/or something to be abstained from?
I worded my question from the perspective of a customer because OMI is the token you can use to buy NFTs. Thus, is being a customer haram/mukruh? Would the perspective of treating a purchase as an investment be haram/mukruh?
To further this discussion, I believe buying OMI tokens (which are used to buy NFTs in the platfrom) does not constitute as buying the NFTs themselves, so they may not be considered haram. Whether the NFT is halal or haram should have no bearing on the token utilized, much like any currency that could be used to purchase halal or haram products.
Am I wrong in this assumption? I’m abstaining from investing in the OMI token until my conscience is clear…
Sala, i had got a respond form a brother who looked into this…
I read the white paper and could find nothing inherently haram about
the OMI token.
I then downloaded the Veve app. There are some transactions on the App
itself that are not sharia compliant, such as buying a “blind box” and
purchasing a “random color variant” where you only know what you
bought after you make the purchase (gharar).
Since I’m unable to ascertain what percentage of transactions on the
app fall in this category, and the fact that the price of OMI should
logically be positively correlated with the amount of use the Veve app
gets, I am uncomfortable profiting from this token.
Salam,
This was teh answer i got from a brother in practical islamic finance…
I read the white paper and could find nothing inherently haram about
the OMI token.
I then downloaded the Veve app. There are some transactions on the App
itself that are not sharia compliant, such as buying a “blind box” and
purchasing a “random color variant” where you only know what you
bought after you make the purchase (gharar).
Since I’m unable to ascertain what percentage of transactions on the
app fall in this category, and the fact that the price of OMI should
logically be positively correlated with the amount of use the Veve app
gets, I am uncomfortable profiting from this token.