Zcash

Zcash is a working payment network with real privacy use, but official religious bodies disagree on whether cryptocurrency is property (mal).

Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. Zcash clearly works: it has run since 28 October 2016, about 16.95 million ZEC existed on 27 September 2026, and shielded transactions reached a record 59.3% of all transactions in February 2026. Malaysia's Securities Commission Shariah Advisory Council (2020) treats digital currency without an underlying asset as goods ('urudh) that may be traded on registered exchanges, and Selangor (2021) allows it on conditions.

ZEC is not a gambling product, but its trading is dominated by futures and its 2026 price run was highly speculative.

Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through real exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and ZEC has no chance-based payout of its own; it is a payment and savings asset. The market around it is heavily speculative, though. On 27 September 2026 Binance ZECUSDT perpetual futures traded about $2.02 billion in 24 hours against about $323 million on the spot pair, so futures were about 86% of that pair's volume (a one-day snapshot), and Bybit offers ZEC perpetuals but no ZEC spot pair.

Code and supply rules are public, but a hidden counterfeiting flaw was found in the Orchard shielded pool in 2026 and governance has been unsettled.

Gharar is excessive uncertainty or hidden information in a deal. The basics are open: the 21 million cap is a consensus rule in open-source code, and funding streams are defined in public ZIPs. But shielded balances cannot be seen directly, so supply soundness depends on the proofs being correct. In late May 2026 a researcher found a soundness flaw in the circuit of the Orchard pool, which launched in 2022, that could in theory have allowed counterfeit ZEC to be created.

Zcash is used for private and ordinary payments and saving, but the purpose of shielded transfers cannot be observed and regulators treat privacy coins as high risk.

The main uses are payments and saving, both permissible, and financial privacy itself is a legitimate aim: Islamic ethics values protecting a person's private affairs (sitr), and privacy protects people from theft and surveillance. Shielded use is large: nearly 30% of circulating ZEC was shielded in 2026 and shielded transactions reached 59.3% of all transactions in February 2026. The difficulty is that shielded activity cannot be measured by purpose.

Financial privacy is a real benefit, but the same feature makes money laundering harder to detect, and privacy-tool developers have faced prosecution.

Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit is real: people can save and pay without exposing their balances and payment history to the public, which protects against theft, profiling and surveillance, and viewing keys allow selective disclosure to auditors. The harm is also significant and disputed. Regulators say privacy tokens make it nearly impossible for firms to meet anti-money-laundering standards that require knowing who sends and receives funds, and the DFSA, UAE CMA and EU AMLR restrict them on that basis.