How to calculate zakat on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets — nisab, valuation, staking rewards, and a full worked example.
Published August 26, 2026 · Reviewed by the Ihsabha Editorial Team
Cryptocurrency did not exist when the classical rulings on zakat were written, which leaves many Muslim investors unsure whether their Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other holdings are zakatable at all, and if so, how to value something that can swing by double-digit percentages in a single day. The short answer from contemporary scholarship is straightforward: crypto is zakatable wealth. The more useful answer is how to actually calculate it, which depends on a few details, whether you are trading actively or holding long-term, how you value a volatile asset on a single date, and what to do with staking or mining rewards. This guide walks through each of those points and finishes with a worked example you can adapt to your own portfolio.
Major fatwa councils and contemporary scholars, including bodies that have issued formal rulings specifically on digital assets, agree that cryptocurrency held with any monetary or investment intent falls within zakatable wealth (mal zakawi). This is not a controversial or minority position; it follows directly from the broader principle that zakat applies to wealth that has value, is owned outright, and is capable of growth or exchange, all of which cryptocurrency satisfies regardless of the underlying blockchain technology. The debate among scholars is not over whether zakat applies, but over which category of zakatable wealth crypto belongs to, since that classification affects the fine details of the calculation. If you want to go further, Who Is Eligible to Receive Zakat? The 8 Categories explains this point in more depth. Use the Trade Assets Zakat Calculator below to check your own numbers quickly and accurately.
Contemporary rulings generally place cryptocurrency into one of two categories, and the difference matters mostly for edge cases rather than for the headline 2.5% rate. The first view treats crypto as tradeable property (urud al-tijarah), similar to how stock-in-trade or resale inventory is treated, meaning it is valued at current market price and zakat is due on the full market value each year regardless of whether it has been sold. The second view treats crypto as a currency-like store of value, closer to how cash or gold is treated, which leads to a broadly similar outcome, valuation at market price and a 2.5% rate, but with slightly different reasoning about receivables and paired assets. For nearly all individual holders, both views converge on the same practical calculation: total market value multiplied by 2.5%.
The way you use your crypto does not change the zakat rate, but it does change how naturally the calculation fits into your existing habits. Active traders, people buying and selling frequently with the intent of profiting from price movement, are almost universally classified under the trade-goods category. Their entire portfolio value on the hawl completion date, cost basis is irrelevant, only current market value matters, is zakatable at 2.5%, exactly like a shop owner's inventory. Long-term holders, people who bought coins with the intent to hold for years rather than trade, are also zakatable, though a small minority of scholars have argued for treating long-held crypto more like a personal-use asset in narrow cases. The safer and far more common position, and the one Ihsabha's calculators follow, is that held cryptocurrency remains zakatable at its full market value each year, since it retains monetary and investment character regardless of holding period.
Nisab is the minimum threshold of wealth a person must hold before zakat becomes obligatory, and crypto is measured against the same nisab used for cash and other monetary wealth, typically the silver standard of roughly 595 grams of silver converted to your local currency, or the gold standard of roughly 85 grams of gold, depending on which standard you apply consistently. If the combined value of your crypto holdings, added together with any other zakatable cash, savings, and investments you own, meets or exceeds this threshold on your hawl completion date, zakat becomes due on the full combined total, not just the portion above nisab.
The most practical challenge with crypto zakat is not the rate or the category, it is the valuation moment. Because prices move constantly, the accepted approach is to pick the fair market value at a single, consistent point in time on your hawl completion date, such as the spot price at midnight in your local time zone or the closing price on the exchange where you hold your assets, and use that figure for every coin and token you hold. There is no need or expectation to average prices over the day or the preceding weeks; a single snapshot valuation, applied consistently year after year, is both the simplest and the most defensible approach. You may also find it useful to check How to Track Your Zakat Payments Every Year, which covers a related angle.
Coins or tokens earned through staking, mining, liquidity provision, or other yield-generating crypto activity are treated as additions to your zakatable wealth once you receive and control them. There is no separate exemption or reduced rate for rewards earned this way; they are simply added to your total holdings and valued at market price on your hawl date along with everything else. One practical note: because staking rewards often arrive in small increments throughout the year, it is worth keeping a running log of when each batch was received, since this occasionally matters for scholars who apply a staggered hawl to income received throughout the year, though the mainstream and simplest practice is to value your entire holding as one snapshot on a single annual date. For an instant, practical check, the Trade Assets Zakat Calculator is ready to go.
Non-fungible tokens occupy a genuinely less settled position than fungible cryptocurrency. If an NFT is held purely for personal enjoyment with no intention of resale, similar to a piece of art hung on a wall, many scholars would not classify it as zakatable in the same way as an investment asset. If it was acquired with resale or investment intent, however, the same trade-goods treatment as cryptocurrency generally applies, valuation at current market price and 2.5% due annually. Given how illiquid and difficult to price many NFTs are, this is an area where consulting a knowledgeable local scholar about your specific holdings is more useful than a blanket rule.
Once nisab is met, the calculation itself is the standard zakat formula: 2.5% (one-fortieth) of the total zakatable value on your hawl completion date. Add the market value of every coin and token you hold, converted to your home currency at your chosen valuation moment, combine that with any other cash or investment holdings that share the same hawl date, then multiply the combined total by 0.025.
Consider an investor with the following crypto portfolio on their hawl completion date:
Total zakatable crypto value: $13,500 + $11,200 + $2,300 = $27,000. Assuming this exceeds the applicable nisab and the investor holds no other zakatable cash that year, zakat due is $27,000 × 0.025 = $675. This naturally leads to a related question, answered in Zakat on Stocks and Investments: How to Calculate What You Owe.
A common practical concern is that zakat is due in a spendable currency, but a portfolio might be entirely in crypto with no cash on hand. The obligation does not require selling the exact coins zakat is calculated on; it is acceptable to pay the equivalent cash value from other funds, or to convert a small portion of the portfolio to cover the amount due. What is not acceptable is delaying payment indefinitely because the wealth happens to be held in a volatile or illiquid form, since the obligation is tied to the hawl completion date regardless of how easily the underlying asset can be converted to cash that day.
It helps to see cryptocurrency zakat alongside the more familiar case of stock market investments, since the underlying logic is nearly identical. A stock actively traded for short-term profit is valued at market price and zakat is due on the full value; a stock held for years as a long-term investment is generally treated the same way under the majority position, full market value, 2.5% annually, though a minority view allows a reduced calculation based on the company's underlying zakatable assets for genuinely passive, long-term equity holdings. Cryptocurrency has not developed an equivalent "underlying assets" reduction in mainstream contemporary rulings, mainly because a coin or token does not represent partial ownership of a company with its own balance sheet the way a share does. Until that kind of nuanced treatment becomes more established, the safer and more widely followed approach for crypto, regardless of holding period, is full market value at 2.5%. You can use the Trade Assets Zakat Calculator to get the result instantly, with no manual math.
Crypto holders are more likely than most other zakat payers to have their wealth scattered across several places at once: a hardware wallet for long-term storage, a hot wallet for everyday transactions, and balances sitting on two or three different exchanges. Building a simple habit of exporting balances from each location on your chosen valuation date each year, even a basic spreadsheet with one row per wallet or exchange and a snapshot value, removes almost all of the guesswork from the annual calculation and prevents the common problem of forgetting a smaller holding that was set up once and never revisited. This habit becomes especially valuable if you eventually consult a scholar about a specific edge case, since having a clear paper trail of what you held and when makes that conversation far more productive than trying to reconstruct history from memory.
Stablecoins, tokens designed to track the value of a fiat currency such as the US dollar, are treated the same as any other cryptocurrency holding for zakat purposes: their market value on your hawl date is included in your zakatable total at the standard 2.5% rate. Because their value does not fluctuate the way Bitcoin or Ethereum does, stablecoins are, if anything, simpler to value than other crypto assets, since one unit is designed to equal roughly one unit of the currency it tracks. The one point worth checking is how the specific stablecoin is backed; some scholars distinguish between stablecoins backed by real cash reserves and those backed by other volatile crypto assets or algorithmic mechanisms, though for the purpose of the zakat calculation itself, valuation and rate remain the same regardless of the backing mechanism. For a deeper look, our guide on Zakat on Business Assets: How to Calculate Zakat on Trade Goods covers this in more detail.
Freelancers, remote workers, and small businesses increasingly accept payment in cryptocurrency for goods or services rather than converting immediately to a home currency. This income is treated no differently from wages or invoices paid in cash: it is not zakatable the instant it is received, but whatever portion remains held, whether still in the original coin or converted to another currency, becomes part of your zakatable wealth once your hawl completes. The one added step is valuation: coins received as payment should be logged at the market price on the date of receipt for your own accounting and tax purposes, but for zakat, only the value on your hawl date matters, not the value at the moment you were paid, since zakat is assessed on wealth held, not income as it arrives.
Skip the manual portfolio math. Ihsabha's Trade Assets Zakat Calculator totals your holdings, applies the nisab standard you choose, and gives you the exact amount due in seconds.
Yes. The overwhelming majority of contemporary scholars and fatwa councils treat cryptocurrency as zakatable wealth, whether it is classified as a form of tradeable property (mal) or as a currency-like store of value. The exact category affects how it is calculated, not whether zakat applies at all.
The obligation and rate are the same either way, 2.5% of current market value, but active traders are generally advised to value their entire portfolio at year-end market prices, while long-term holders who bought with the intent to hold apply the same valuation on their hawl completion date. The practical difference is mainly about record-keeping frequency, not the formula.
Use the fair market value in your home currency on the date your zakat year (hawl) completes, typically the closing or spot price from a major exchange at that moment. Since crypto prices are volatile, most scholars recommend picking one consistent time of day each year, such as midnight in your local time zone, rather than trying to find an average.
Yes. Coins or tokens received through staking, mining, or other yield-generating activity are added to your zakatable holdings once received, and are valued at market price on your hawl date along with the rest of your portfolio. There is no separate exemption for rewards earned this way.
Crypto zakat feels unfamiliar mainly because the asset class is new, not because the underlying rules are genuinely different from zakat on any other form of tradeable wealth. Once you have picked a consistent valuation moment, listed every wallet and exchange balance, and folded in any staking or reward income, the calculation is the same single multiplication that applies to cash, stocks, or business inventory. The volatility of the market changes the number each year; it does not change the method.
Put this into practice with Ihsabha's Gold & Silver Zakat Calculator and Cash & Savings Zakat Calculator. For related reading on Ihsabha's blog, see Zakat on Salary and Employment Income: How to Calculate What You Owe, Zakat on Retirement Accounts and Pension Funds (401k, EPF): Full Guide and Zakat on Cash and Bank Savings: How Much You Owe.