Nigeria’s Regulator And Sharia Compliance With Crypto

Recently, Professor Abdulrazaq Alaro, Head Department of Islamic Law, University of Ilorin, Kwara State, gave a presentation on “Cryptocurrency: An Islamic Law Perspective” at a webinar hosted by the Forerunner Welfare Foundation in collaboration with the Muslims Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN) Somolu was organized regional council.

Professor Alaro is a member of the Financial Regulation Advisory Council of Experts of the Central Bank of Nigeria and a member of the Takaful Advisory Council of the National Insurance Commission. He began his lecture with the development of money.

According to him, in prehistoric times there was no money, but barter, ie people exchanged goods with each other on the market. But that could not sustain a high volume of business or trade transactions. In his opinion, this led to the invention of money as a medium of exchange. In early human society, people exchanged commodity money in the form of gold and silver. Gold and silver were also used as currencies during the time of Prophet Mohammad (SAW).

The scholar noted that another mode of money development was “Fiat Money”. He viewed fiat money as a currency that has no intrinsic value. Currency is accepted based on the full trust and creditworthiness of the issuing authority. “The money we have today is just paper, but it’s valuable because it’s accepted by authorities around the world.”

He identified math-based money (virtual currencies) as another development of money that emerged about 12-13 years ago.