Bitcoin May 29, 2018 Daily Hodl Staff

London Mosque Seeks Worldwide Support, Accepts Bitcoin and Ethereum During Ramadan

Worldwide donations in Bitcoin and Ethereum are expected to flow into the Masjid Ramadan, also known as Shacklewell Lane Mosque in Dalston, east London. The Zakat alms-giving, customary among all but the poorest Muslims, will be used for emergency repairs and community support.

“We are hoping to bring the attention to the Muslim world we need support,” says Erkin Guney, Chairman of the Board of Trustees. “I’ve grown up around here, and I have watched the community grow and the challenges it’s faced with. It’s a struggle – with housing, food, the cost of funerals and government changes. We are trying to appeal to a wider audience with the new money. It’s big in the Islamic world, and we have set up a platform for wealthier Muslims outside our community to support and donate to our mosque,” reports the Gazette.

The mosque may be the first in the UK to accept cryptocurrency. They are seeking guidance from Gurmit Singh on how to receive, store and manage their incoming Bitcoin and Ethereum. Singh is the founder of Combo Innovation, a London-based startup focused on blockchain solutions for the Islamic compliant financial markets. Once the donations have been collected, the cryptocurrency will be converted to sterling through a cryptocurrency exchange.

The key benefit of accepting Bitcoin and Ethereum is that it allows the mosque to collect donations from anyone in the world without having donors pay expensive bank wire fees in addition to other fees associated with currency conversions. The entire worldwide community will be able to track the donations by checking the Bitcoin address and the Ethereum address. Frictionless transactions combined with this type of transparency are making cryptocurrency donations more attractive and appealing for organizations and their donors.

“Bitcoin is like any other currency. It’s a currency which is accepted by a group of people. So it becomes the norm in that environment. It is traded, and we can accept it. We ourselves are not trading. We are not involved. We’re a charity. We do services for the community,” a spokesperson for the mosque told Reuters.

Donations in Bitcoin and Ethereum are accepted online.