Source: Reuters
BY Andrew Torchia, Bernardo Vizcaino
DUBAI/SYDNEY (Reuters) – In Dubai’s decades-old Gold Souk, customers from around the world haggle over bangles and necklaces. Elsewhere in the emirate, the region’s top center for gold trade, bullion is playing a new role in financial engineering.
A local start-up company founded last year, OneGram, is issuing a gold-backed cryptocurrency — part of efforts to convince Muslims that investing in cryptocurrencies complies with their faith.
The global surge of interest in bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies extends into the Gulf and southeast Asia, the main centers of Islamic finance.
But because they are products of financial engineering and objects of speculation, cryptocurrencies sit uneasily with Islam. Sharia principles, in addition to banning interest payments, emphasize real economic activity based on physical assets and frown on pure monetary speculation.
If the currency would be backed by gold it would be a gold-back currency and not a crypto currency. But, yes, frankly speaking I do not quite understand all that …