HAQQ Community Bridges Frontier Expertise with the Moral Rules of Islam

The tokenized real-world belongings sector has surged over the previous few years and is predicted to develop to a staggering $16 trillion market by 2030. To information us in navigating via this market, Alex Malkov, co-founder of Islamic Coin, talks about this business and the most recent Islamic Coin updates in an interview with Coin Version.

1. In 2023, the HAQQ Community and its native cryptocurrency, Islamic Coin (ISLM), emerged as essentially the most outstanding L1 blockchain bringing Islamic Finance to web3. Now it’s making an excellent comeback saying the approaching launch of its gold-backed token. Might you share how this token integrates with Islamic monetary ideas and what distinctive benefits it affords over conventional gold investments?

At present, alternatives for conventional gold funding are lagging behind the rampant demand for the asset. As traders endure from geopolitical turbulence, excessive market volatility, and robust inflationary pressures, they start flying to security. This has resulted in new all-time highs for the worth of gold this yr. Furthermore, gold-linked ETFs come at the price of superfluous administration expense ratios or inclusion into coveted monetary markets. Our token supplies traders with the benefit of one-click buying and selling, international availability, and monetary inclusion at no extra value to the shopper.

There may be an ongoing debate among the many students of Islamic Legislation about whether or not crypto tokens fall underneath the second class. Within the case of Islamic Coin, we received Fatwa from well-known Muslim students to make sure our venture is Shariah-compliant and supplies actual tangible worth to the group. Empowering conventional Muslims financially and supporting group improvement by funding ethical-focused initiatives on our chain suffices to show that ISLM is greater than only a speculative instrument.

It’s even simpler to make sure Shariah compliance within the case of our new gold-backed token. Because it might be exchanged on-demand for a real-world tangible asset, it bears no hypothesis on ambiguity, and pays no direct curiosity, which makes it completely aligned with the core Islamic monetary ideas.

2. The launch of your gold-backed token signifies your shift towards tokenizing real-world belongings. Are you able to share your imaginative and prescient for this market and description the steps you’re planning to take?

The tokenization of real-world belongings has lengthy been a scorching subject within the blockchain and finance communities, and we at HAQQ share this pleasure. Taking an instrument with a longtime market match to the following degree of comfort is the low-hanging fruit when it comes to including worth to the ecosystem. I imagine that we’re but to see the RWA market enlargement in 2024, and this development shall be pushed by tokenized bonds. Simply over the past yr, as an illustration, the capital allocation to on-chain Treasuries skyrocketed ten-fold.

We acknowledge the steady pattern and search to contribute to its broader adoption, in addition to to supply conventional Muslims extra alternatives to profit from Web3. At present, HAQQ Community is actively exploring the technical facets of taking Halal Islamic bonds — Sukuk — on-chain. Extra accessible, handy, and moral capital markets will profit traders and debtors alike.

3. The previous yr has been robust for the whole crypto business, together with Islamic Coin. Might you focus on the way you’ve managed these challenges and the important thing takeaways on your staff?

The official launch of Islamic Coin in October 2023 was sadly overshadowed by the beginning of the VARA investigation. Regardless of the HAQQ’s stellar transparency and compliance protocols, the regulatory authority believed additional clarifications had been vital. Our dedication to open communication and cooperation finally resulted in an investigation ending with no enforcement from the VARA’s facet.

However, the VARA incident stirred adverse media discourse round ISLM, and a few exchanges revoked their dedication to help Islamic Coin on the idea of unjustified threat — simply days earlier than the itemizing date.

But, we continued to carry to our key ideas — regulatory integrity, product high quality, and dedication. Islamic Coin was efficiently listed on a number of centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges. Our group stays our biggest power and help, and we really feel privileged to stay as much as your belief.

4. After navigating all these challenges, you at the moment are planning to develop your product ecosystem. Might you present extra particulars about your future plans for this enlargement?

Our ecosystem enlargement targets two key priorities: to enhance the customers’ comfort and broaden the scope of funding alternatives on the HAQQ Community. Firstly, we intention to decrease the barrier to entry and enhance UX by introducing our official Telegram bot and altering the HAQQ Pockets’s performance. HAQQ Pockets is a non-custodial crypto pockets with Halal-complying yield alternatives throughout the vary of supported belongings. As I’ve already talked about, we’re additionally actively engaged on the gold-backed token, the tokenization of Sukuk (Islamic bonds), and additional exploration of the alternatives available in the market for RWA tokenization. Lastly, we additionally search to enhance monetary inclusion among the many conventional Muslim communities. To advance this trigger, we’re launching a peer-to-peer mortgage market and distributing pay as you go ISLM-denominated Visa playing cards, launched in partnership with Brighty.

5. Because the Islamic coin continues to develop, reaching out to and educating various communities is essential. What initiatives are you launching to deepen engagement and improve understanding of your platform in trendy crypto key markets like Nigeria, Indonesia, Turkey, and Malaysia?

We imagine that our ecosystem’s biggest worth lies inside its vibrant group base. You will need to share our imaginative and prescient, educate our supporters, and empower new customers from new geographies. The subsequent section is centered round various group engagement initiatives — primarily native meetups, growing our HAQQ Academy, and strong academic content material from native influencers and key opinion leaders.

6. The ultimate query is about your future imaginative and prescient. With important developments in product improvement and ecosystem development, what’s the long-term imaginative and prescient for Islamic Coin, and the way do you envision it shaping the way forward for Islamic finance and the broader crypto business?

We stay dedicated to the mission of advancing a extra inclusive, moral, and equitable monetary ecosystem. HAQQ Community is a first-rate instance of mixing frontier expertise and the moral ideas of Islamic finance. I hope we set an instance for the broader business. The preliminary ethos of crypto lay in empowering the broader group — let’s not neglect our roots.