Bahrain Central Bank Approves Stellar As ‘Sharia Compliant’

According to reports out today, the Bahrain Central Bank (CBB) have approved the Stellar.org project as Sharia compliant. This means that under the guise of the CBB, Stellar can carry a Sharia certification that means the project and its entities are approved by Islamic law and that interaction between the Stellar project and the Islamic faith is not forbidden in anyway.

This is an exciting development, as, overall, cryptocurrency is uncertain within many areas of Islam due to cryptos nature as something uncertain and unregulated. Overall, the view towards cryptocurrency is promising, so long as those within the faith who wish to engage in crypto related activities do so in line with national laws and Islamic laws.

According to the News of Bahrain, a spokesperson from Stellar has said:

“We advance our mission of financial access and inclusion by obtaining a Sharia compliance certification for the Stellar technology and network. The Shariyah Review Bureau (SRB), a leading international Sharia advisory agency licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain, has reviewed the properties and applications of Stellar and has promulgated guidance and guidelines that enable Sharia compliant applications of Stellar technology in Islamic financial institutions.”

Moreover:

“Stellar is the first distributed ledger protocol to receive Sharia compliance certification in the money transfer and asset tokenisation space. Additionally, the Sharia compliance certification extends to applications and usages of lumens (XLM).”

This is exciting for XLM, as it informs people within Bahrain that this is an approved format of currency and thus, those who wish to explore cryptocurrency can now approach the industry via Stellar and via XLM. Moreover, this has worldwide implications too, as the CBB are setting a standard for many other Islamic countries to follow. The approval of XLM in Bahrain is just the start of what could be a more worldwide adoption of XLM and the Stellar project.

Once again, this is another example of Stellar standing up and paving its own way into a secure future, creating new partnerships and announcements that as it stands, only Ripple and XRP could dream of.

With a focus on remittance payments and cross border transactions, Sharia approval could prove to be a very big thing for Stellar indeed.