In a blog post published on their website, Amanie Advisors announced that the firm has collaborated with the Ethereum Foundation to establish the platform’s compliance with Sharia religious law.
As a result of the collaboration, the company released a paper with the main purpose of illustrating Ethereum’s compliance with Islamic morals, which concedes a Sharia endorsement of the project and the coin.
Islamic finance and Sharia advisory firm Amanie Advisors have established Ether’s (ETH) compliance with Islamic religious law.
Ether receives Sharia endorsement
In the white paper, the advisory firm says that — as with other cryptocurrencies — there are uncertainties when it comes to Ethereum’s compliance with Sharia law, which maintains strict standards for financial activities and condemns, in particular, usury. More precisely, Amanie Advisors raised questions as to whether Muslims should mine or trade Ether, or even deploy smart contracts or decentralized applications (DApps) on the platform.
Hopes of increased Islamic participation
The company noted that before conducting their research the hypothesis was that if Ether is deemed Sharia-compliant, then the Islamic community will be more eager to get involved with it. This, in turn, could result in the development of Sharia-compliant smart contracts and DApps, developments that are reportedly lagging.
The author of the post writes:
“It is hoped that with the findings, parameters and guideline outlined in this paper, it would serve as a catalyst to the Islamic finance market, and wider Muslim population to enter and participate in the space as well.”
At the beginning of August, CEO of Amanie Advisors Suhaida Mahpot said that she saw the current reluctance to accept crypto among the Islamic community as a matter of undertainty, explaining that:
“We need to educate institutions more about how digital currencies can be accepted, and how the transparency from using cryptocurrency would benefit the wider society. Perhaps, this mindset will change over time.”
As Cointelegraph reported in July last year, Stellar, an open-source platform for distributed payments, is reportedly the first distributed ledger protocol to obtain Sharia compliance certification in the money transfer and asset tokenization field.
Algo VC Fund Raises $200 Million to Fast-Track Ethereum Rival
Algo Capital has raised $200 million — double its original goal — for its venture capital fund.
According to a news release shared with Cointelegraph on Aug. 27, the new fund will invest in businesses helping to build infrastructure for the Algorand blockchain — an open-source public ledger and cryptocurrency payment system that utilizes a Byzantine Agreement message-passing protocol.
The fund will also be investing in businesses focused on accelerating the adoption of the platform’s native token, Algo, as a means of payment.
As previously reported, Algorand was founded by Silvio Micali, a cryptographer and Turing Award winner who is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Investors and goals
Algo Capital’s news release states that the Algo VC fund has sealed backing from an international group of financial and blockchain industry investors, including Brainchild, NGC Ventures (the venture arm of NEO Global,) Eterna Capital, GSR, Cognitive Blockchain, Rokk3r Inc., Wibson, 11-11 Ventures, DG Ventures, Winslow Strong, Invermaster, and others.
The fund — which reportedly holds a large stake in Algos — has revealed that its initial portfolio companies include security token issuance platform Securitize, decentralized exchange Idex, blockchain infrastructure and middleware orchestration platform BlockDaemon, and institutional exchange and cross-custodian settlement platform OTCXN.
The VC fund is led by blockchain investor David Garcia, entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist Arul Murugan, and blockchain technology specialist Pablo Yabo.
All commitments to the fund were reportedly accepted in Algos rather than in U.S. dollars, with the token being used as the primary currency for all capital calls. Moreover, a portion of the fund’s capital investments comprises Algos in order to enable portfolio firms to use the digital token as a means of payment within the Algorand network.
Algo Capital says it is pursuing joint ventures with various international accelerators and venture studios to further investment in blockchain enterprises across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.
Ethereum’s rival?
As reported this summer, Algorand raised more than $60 million in its Algo token sale on financial services platform CoinList. This capital was in addition to the $66 million the firm had raised over the past year from investors, including VC firms Union Square Ventures and Pillar Venture Capital.
In light of its development of a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol and aspiration to host an app development platform for enterprises, Algorand is considered by some to be the closest competitor to Ethereum (ETH).
