Cryptoassets as property (maal): Islamic legal and ethical foundations and evaluative framework

While most discussions on cryptoassets from Islamic perspectives have focused on their legality, this chapter presents a framework to assess their status from the legal and ethical attributes of property (maal). The key attributes of maal from an Islamic perspective is identified as permissible, desirability, ownership, storability, beneficial, transferability, material value and measurability. Using the evaluative framework, the research compares the status of property attributes of cryptocurrencies and exchange tokens with their real-economy counterparts of fiat currency and ijara-based sukuk. The results indicate that the compliance of cryptoassets with the attributes of maal is relatively weaker compared to real-economy products. This is mainly due to the technology-related factors that introduce risks and constrain the compliance with certain attributes. The weaker compliance of property attributes of cryptoassets can be enhanced by strengthening the market infrastructure and introducing enabling laws and regulations that facilitate transactions of cryptoassets in a secured manner.