Cronos
CRO#30CRO is the coin of Crypto.com and its Cronos blockchains, used to pay network fees, secure Cronos through staking and unlock app perks.
- Market cap
- $3.42B
- Volume 24h
- $12.36M
- All-time high
- $0.8915
- −92.28% from ATH
- Circulating supply
- 49.75B of 100B
Does not clear all 8 Shariah criteria. Needs caution: nature of the asset, gambling (maysir), business model, and excessive uncertainty (gharar).
- 4 pass
- 4 caution
- 0 fail
Verdict history
- DoubtfulCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold Cronos?8 Shariah criteria
4 pass · 4 caution · 0 failHolding CRO pays no interest; staking rewards on Cronos POS Chain are paid for validation, though a new time-locked bonus is funded from a reserve.
Riba means interest or any fixed increase on a loan. This criterion asks whether simply holding the asset produces interest. CRO pays nothing to its holder. Holders can delegate CRO to validators on Cronos POS Chain, and those rewards come mainly from newly created CRO (about 1% a year, set to shrink each month under the May 2026 upgrade) plus transaction fees; this is payment for securing the network, not interest on a loan.
Since the same upgrade, stakers may lock CRO for one, two or four years for a bonus rate paid at first from the CRO reserve, which looks more like a return for time than for work; this is assessed under staking below. Crypto.com Earn is an optional exchange product, not a feature of CRO, and is assessed under yield products. The score sits in the lower part of the pass band because of these lock-up features.
CRO is the working fuel and staking coin of the Cronos chains and has app utility, but authoritative bodies disagree whether crypto tokens are property (mal).
CRO pays transaction fees on Cronos EVM, secures Cronos POS Chain through staking and governance, and gives perks in the Crypto.com app. That is real utility, not an empty record. On whether such tokens are property (mal), Malaysia's Securities Commission Shariah Advisory Council treats a digital currency without an underlying asset as a tradable good ('urudh).
A June 2026 fatwa from Darul Uloom Karachi says crypto tokens are not mal, Indonesia's MUI holds that crypto is not valid to trade as a commodity unless it has an underlying and meets the conditions of a tradable good, and state fatwa bodies in Egypt, Turkey and the UAE have rejected cryptocurrency in general. This disagreement among authorities keeps the criterion at caution.
CRO has a real function, but the issuer is building a large betting-like business on event contracts and much trading around CRO is speculative.
Maysir means gambling, or gains that depend mainly on chance; ordinary price swings are not maysir. CRO is not a meme or betting token: it pays fees and secures the Cronos chains. But its issuer runs Prediction Trading, which its help centre calls a derivatives feature with Yes/No contracts on events paying $1 if correct, and in February 2026 launched OG, a standalone prediction market centred on sports event contracts, after what it called 40x growth of that business over six months. CRO itself is not needed to place these bets, and no data link CRO demand to them.
CRO's price has also swung sharply: about 63% down over a year and about 92% below its 2021 peak. Because a real function exists, this is caution, not fail.
Crypto.com earns from derivatives, event contracts and yield products, but it publishes no revenue split, so the 5% and 20% limits cannot be tested.
For exchange tokens, the test is the income of the exchange behind the token. Crypto.com offers derivatives through its US arm CDNA, a CFTC-registered exchange and clearinghouse, including prediction contracts on sports and other events, which resemble betting, and yield products whose source is not explained. CDNA runs Crypto.com's own OG platform, which plans to add margin trading, and also lists sports event contracts for other operators such as FanDuel Predicts. AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard 20 treats futures without delivery as impermissible.
No public revenue breakdown for Crypto.com was found, so the share of income from these activities cannot be measured against the 5% limit for clearly impermissible income or the 20% limit for disputed income. When the revenue mix is unknown, this criterion is rated caution, not fail; the score sits at the bottom of the band because event contracts are a fast-growing, openly promoted business of the issuer. On the protocol side, Cronos Labs proposes to use all revenue from its new products, Ult and Cronos Launch, to buy and burn CRO; that vote was still open on 27 September 2026 and gives no revenue figures.
Supply is visible on-chain, but it has been changed by votes, including a disputed 2025 reissue of 70 billion burned CRO, and control is concentrated around Crypto.com.
Gharar means excessive uncertainty or hidden terms. CRO's total supply can be read from the chain (about 98.95 billion on 27 September 2026) and the client code is open source. But the rules have changed by vote: 70 billion CRO burned in 2021 were reissued in March 2025 into a 'strategic reserve', after about 3.35 billion CRO voted in the final hours and pushed turnout past quorum, and critics said Crypto.com controls those validators.
The reserve vests in equal monthly parts over five years (about 1.17 billion CRO a month since the March 2025 upgrade) for broadly stated purposes such as US initiatives, a CRO ETF and ecosystem grants, and a proposal now open would commit it to fund staking rewards, without a stated limit on how much. Cronos EVM validators are admitted by invitation. This partial opacity is caution; it is not fail, because supply changes have gone through public votes and are visible on-chain rather than made at will without disclosure.
CRO is mainly used as network fuel, for staking and governance, and for perks in the Crypto.com app; no reliable data show a notable share of disputed use.
CRO's main uses are permissible in themselves: paying fees on Cronos EVM, staking and voting on Cronos POS Chain, and membership perks in the Crypto.com app. Some uses are disputed: CRO can be placed in yield products and in lending apps on Cronos, and Crypto.com pays bonus rewards in CRO on Earn. No primary or reputable source measures how much of CRO's use goes to these purposes. The status is therefore a low pass, and the missing data are recorded as a gap.
CRO can be bought and held outright, with full payment, on exchanges and in self-custody.
This criterion only asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible form, not whether the asset itself passed. CRO is a native coin that can be bought on spot markets, paid in full and withdrawn to a personal wallet. It is on the official lists of tradable crypto-assets in Indonesia and Kazakhstan. No US fund holding CRO was confirmed as trading: a proposed Truth Social Cronos fund would also stake its CRO. CRO does not exist only as a leveraged or derivative wrapper.
The Cronos chains offer low-cost infrastructure; harms exist but do not dominate, and no sanctions or fraud finding against the issuer was found.
Maslahah means weighing real benefit against real harm. On the benefit side, Cronos offers low-fee transfers and applications and is used across a large consumer crypto app. On the harm side, the 2025 reserve vote showed how far a single company can change the rules for all holders, and the issuer promotes betting-like event contracts, which are weighed under gambling and business model. The US SEC closed its investigation of Crypto.com in March 2025 without action, and this research found no sanctions or fraud finding against it. Benefit is clear and harm is moderate, so this is a low pass.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesSpot CRO with full, immediate payment is widely available and can be withdrawn to a personal wallet. Spot is acceptable for a DOUBTFUL asset; the doubts concern the asset and its issuer, not the spot method.
No fund that simply holds CRO was confirmed as trading. The proposed Truth Social Cronos Yield Maximizer ETF would stake its CRO through Crypto.com, so its structure would need a separate check if it launches.
CRO pays network fees on Cronos and is used within the Crypto.com app; no payment volume data were found. Tier-1 bodies such as MUI (Indonesia, 2021) prohibit crypto as a means of payment, so this use is caution.
Base staking on Cronos POS Chain pays for validation, mostly from new issuance and fees, which on its own would be acceptable. Since May 2026, time-locked positions of one to four years add a bonus rate paid first from the CRO reserve, a structure closer to a return for time; ShariaQuant flags the emission-funded yield. Plain delegation without a time-lock is the cleaner option.
Always fail: borrowing with leverage and deferred exchange without delivery (AAOIFI SS 20).
Always fail: futures, perpetuals, options and event contracts are deferred exchange without delivery, with leverage (AAOIFI SS 20).
Lending CRO for a fixed or guaranteed return is riba, whether through a platform or a lending app on Cronos.
Crypto.com Earn pays variable rewards, with extra CRO bonuses for some members, but its page does not say how rewards are generated; with the source unclear, this is caution. If a product's return comes from lending, it fails.
Scholars quotes
Penggunaan cryptocurrency sebagai mata uang hukumnya haram, karena mengandung gharar (ketidakjelasan), dharar (bahaya) dan bertentangan dengan Undang-Undang nomor 7 tahun 2011 tentang Mata Uang dan Peraturan Bank Indonesia nomor 17 tahun 2015 tentang Kewajiban Penggunaan Rupiah di Wilayah Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia.Sebagaimana mata wang yang lain, mata wang digital hendaklah tidak digunakan sebagai bayaran kepada barangan, perkhidmatan dan aktiviti tidak patuh Syariah seperti pembelian dadah, pelacuran, perjudian dan pendanaan aktiviti keganasan serta penggubahan wang haram.The SAC has also resolved that investment and trading of Digital Assets that fulfil the above requirements and which are traded on Digital Asset Exchange (DAX) registered with SC are permissible.Third: In light of the above and given the significant risks associated with this type of currencies and the instability of their transactions, the Council of the Academy recommends pursuing research and studies on issues affecting its ruling.Bitcoin is a digital currency that does not meet the legal and Sharia criteria that make it a currency subject to the rulings of dealing with official legal currencies recognized internationally.بناءً على ذلك: فلا يجوز شرعًا تداول عملة "البتكوين" والتعامل من خلالها بالبيعِ والشراءِ والإجارةِ وغيرها، بل يُمنع من الاشتراكِ فيها؛ لعدمِ اعتبارِها كوسيطٍ مقبولٍ للتبادلِ من الجهاتِ المخُتصَّةِ، ولِمَا تشتمل عليه من الضررِ الناشئ عن الغررِ والجهالةِ والغشِّ في مَصْرِفها ومِعْيارها وقِيمتها، فضلًا عما تؤدي إليه ممارستُها من مخاطرَ عاليةٍ على الأفراد والدول.Its Shariah status is Doubtful primarily due to its mixed staking yield mechanics, which include token emissions (inflation)—a scholar-debated mechanism.According to research and opinion of experts so far, cryptocurrency is not considered ‘ maal ’ (wealth) in Sharia.Muhammadiyah memandang transaksi dan investasi kripto pada dasarnya mubah (boleh) tetapi dengan syarat tertentu.The opinion on this is the same as doing the same with any halal assets such as shares – 1) is permissible, 2) is more debatable and there are differing opinions on short-term trading.Our current position is 'tawaquf'; we can't say it is halal or haram, but we say it is better not to engage in itThe meeting concluded that exchange tokens are compliant with Shariah principles, meaning they do not inherently pose any Shariah issues.As I mentioned at the beginning of this article it is not necessary to substantiate the permissibility of something as long as there are no prohibited factors involved in it or surrounding it.AI-assisted analysis checked against sources. Not a fatwa or investment advice.
Where it trades
No exchanges from our coverage trade Cronos yet
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