The Last Trade E076: Bitcoin Enables Ethical Finance with Harris Irfan
Harris Irfan, the investment banker who co-founded Deutsche Bank's Islamic finance team and helped reinvent an industry worth trillions, joins The Last Trade to explore the remarkable philosophical alignment between Bitcoin and Islamic finance principles. Harris recounts how Deutsche Bank's arrival in Dubai in 2001 catalyzed an Islamic finance revolution, applying Western structured finance techniques to Sharia law's prohibition of interest and speculative instruments for the first time at institutional scale. He draws direct parallels between Islamic finance's decades-long journey from a sleepy backwater to a global industry and Bitcoin's own trajectory from a 2008 experiment to a $2 trillion asset class. The episode examines why Bitcoin's fixed supply, absence of counterparty risk, and resistance to inflationary debasement make it a natural fit for ethical and Sharia-compliant investing frameworks.
Show Notes
Harris Irfan, the investment banker who co-founded Deutsche Bank's Islamic finance team and helped reinvent an industry worth trillions, joins The Last Trade to explore the remarkable philosophical alignment between Bitcoin and Islamic finance principles. Harris recounts how Deutsche Bank's arrival in Dubai in 2001 catalyzed an Islamic finance revolution, applying Western structured finance techniques to Sharia law's prohibition of interest and speculative instruments for the first time at institutional scale. He draws direct parallels between Islamic finance's decades-long journey from a sleepy backwater to a global industry and Bitcoin's own trajectory from a 2008 experiment to a $2 trillion asset class. The episode examines why Bitcoin's fixed supply, absence of counterparty risk, and resistance to inflationary debasement make it a natural fit for ethical and Sharia-compliant investing frameworks.
Ready to convert your gold to Bitcoin?
Get Your Free Kit →