59. Bitcoin: The Most Islamic Form of Money? with Harris Irfan

In today’s episode Saifedean talks to former investment banker and author of Heaven’s Bankers, Harris Irfan. They discuss Harris’ decades of experiences in Islamic finance and what sparked his interest in bitcoin as a Muslim. Harris explains why bitcoin might be the most sharia-compatible money, why the decentralized nature of bitcoin should be appealing to Muslims, and what Islamic scholars get wrong about bitcoin. We then discuss whether a hard free market money like bitcoin would make finance more equity-based than debt-based. 

Links:

• Harris’ book Heaven’s Bankers: https://amzn.to/3wtxRVz
• Harris’ personal blog: https://islamicmarkets.com/pages/heavens-bankers 
• Harris’ 2019 article, Cryptocurrency and the Future of the Islamic Economy: https://islamicmarkets.com/articles/cryptocurrency-and-the-future-of-the-islamic-economy-1 

THE BITCOIN STANDARD TOOLKIT

The Bitcoin Standard Toolkit is a selection of the Bitcoin services I recommend to readers and learners on saifedean.com, as they upgrade from The Fiat Standard to The Bitcoin Standard.

NYDIG  

NYDIG is a leading full-service financial services firm dedicated to Bitcoin, applying institutional wisdom and ingenuity to help clients access the unrealized potential of this emerging asset class. NYDIG offers the full suite of financial solutions needed for financial institutions to access Bitcoin, from custody, execution, financing, treasury solutions, integration partnerships, and more.

Check their website here: https://nydig.com/

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Cyphersafe 

To secure your bitcoins, it is important to keep your seedphrase backed up safely, and for that, I highly recommend using the CypherWheel seed storage device, a gorgeous and brilliant sturdy piece of low time preference engineering from a fourth-generation machine shop in Maine.

Check their website here: https://cyphersafe.io/

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OKCoin

Whenever someone asks me how to invest in Bitcoin, my advice is to accumulate bitcoins periodically for the long run, or dollar-cost averaging. When you buy every day, week, or month, you play bitcoin’s volatility to your advantage. In the long run, this strategy will outperform every other bitcoin investment strategy, except for dumb luck, and lying about timing the market. For dollar-cost averaging, I strongly recommend OKCoin, the exchange with the lowest fees for recurring purchases worldwide. OKCoin is also the bitcoin exchange accessible in the most countries around the world.

Check their website here: https://okcoin.com/

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Nodl

I believe it is really important to run a node, but I don’t recommend running it on your work or personal computer, as it can compromise the performance of your computer and, more importantly, the security and privacy of your bitcoin node. A far better solution is to buy a dedicated hardware node, and for that, I highly recommend Nodl.

Check their website here: https://www.nodl.it/

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Coldcard

My hardware wallet of choice is the Coldcard. I strongly recommend only conducing bitcoin trades on computers that are dedicated to bitcoin and cannot connect to the internet. I like the Coldcard because it is a contained machine optimized for bitcoin and bitcoin only.

Coldcard is basically a small computer that can only do bitcoin, which makes securing it more straight-forward. Use the code BITCOINSTANDARD on coldcardwallet.com to get a 5% discount. 

Check their website here: https://coldcardwallet.com/