Zakat on what you hold

Crypto zakat is simpler than people fear, and almost everyone gets the same single thing wrong.

The mistake

Most people calculate 2.5% of their profit. Zakat is 2.5% of the market value of what you hold on your zakat date, not of your gain.

If you put in 1,000 and it is worth 4,000 on the day, you owe 2.5% of 4,000. If it is worth 600, you owe 2.5% of 600. Whether you have sold anything makes no difference at all.

The three things you need

Nisab, the threshold. 85 grams of gold or 595 grams of silver, whichever you follow. Silver sets a lower bar, which means more people owe and more reaches the poor, and that is the position most contemporary scholars take for cash and trade goods.

Your zakat date. The lunar anniversary of the day your wealth first passed the nisab and stayed above it. If you genuinely cannot reconstruct that date, choose a fixed one such as the first of Ramadan and keep it for good.

The total. Crypto, cash, gold and money owed to you, added together, then 2.5% of the whole.

The cases that catch people

Staked coins count. They are still yours, and a short unbonding period changes only when you can practically pay.

Airdrops count once they are claimable and yours.

Locked or vesting tokens are genuinely disputed. One view pays when they unlock, another treats them as owned from the start. Take a position with your own scholar and then stay consistent year to year.

A worked example

On your zakat date you hold 3,000 in crypto, 1,200 in a current account, and someone owes you 400 you expect to be repaid.

Total is 4,600. That is above the silver nisab, so zakat is due on the whole amount rather than on the part above the threshold. 2.5% of 4,600 is 115.

Notice that nothing in that calculation asked what you paid for the crypto, and nothing asked whether you sold any of it.

In one line: 2.5% of what it is worth on your date, not 2.5% of what you made.