The Mining Disrupt news update for Monday, August 28, 2023 set aside the usual roundup and stayed with one story: the Sultanate of Oman and its move into Bitcoin mining. On that day, Bitcoin traded at $25,978. On October 26, 2026 it was $80,138.
Before the story, the show read the network numbers. Another upward difficulty adjustment had just landed, blocks were arriving a little slower at about 10 minutes and 6 seconds, on chain fees were sitting at 7 sats per vbyte for both priority and anytime transactions, and the rolling 14 day hashrate average was 397.93 exahash per second.
Oman's $1.1 Billion Bet on Mining
The first part of the story came from a Forbes article titled Oman's Bold Bitcoin Play. According to the piece, the chairman of Oman's Authority for Public Services Regulation said in a press statement that the government supported privately owned Bitcoin mining facilities, which were set to attract a total investment of more than 1.1 billion dollars. In his statement, the initiative fit the country's goal of diversifying its economy and bringing in modern technology while keeping a commitment to ethical and sustainable practices.
The article also quoted the CEO of Exahertz, the company expanding its mining operations in Oman. He described the project as going beyond a traditional mining data center by combining purpose built hardware, hyperscale capacity and smart energy use, and tied it to Oman's Vision 2040 plan for the national economy.
our blueprint for future expansion prioritizes Eco syndric operations utilizing gas flares and hydro energy
· 2:44
The show focused on that date. Vision 2040 was more than 16 years away at the time of the episode, and the host read it as a sign that Oman was not playing a short game. In his view, the country was looking at how to change its whole economic course, not chasing a quick return.
The Exahertz CEO also told Forbes that Bitcoin represents more than a digital currency, describing its open ledger as a significant leap for civilization and the start of a new era of transparency and innovation. The Forbes piece closed on an image of the hum of new mining facilities in the desert, with Oman mining not just the oil beneath its sands but what the article called the digital gold of our times.
Why Bitcoin Can Be Halal
The second part of the episode turned to religion and money. The show played a clip from Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard and the then recently released Principles of Economics, on why he considers Bitcoin to be halal. His argument rests on riba, the Islamic prohibition on interest and unjust gain.
Bitcoin is halal Bitcoin has no riba and Bitcoin allows you to do anything that dollar allows you to do
Saifedean Ammous · 3:52
In the clip, Ammous said Bitcoin lets a person send money across borders or hold savings without going through the system of interest at all. Some people might use Bitcoin for riba, he allowed, just as they can with gold, but nothing in how Bitcoin operates requires it.
The dollar, he argued, is different, because riba is built into it at the protocol level. He said physical paper is only about 5 or 10 percent of fiat money, while around 90 percent of the supply is digital money created when debt is created. On that view, even someone who keeps cash at home and never borrows or lends is still taking part in a system of riba, because the money itself came into existence through debt.
Fiat money is not physical pieces of paper
Saifedean Ammous · 4:41
After the clip, the host read a definition of riba: an Arabic word meaning to increase or to exceed, commonly used for unequal exchanges or for charges on borrowing, with interest considered an unjust and exploitative gain forbidden under Islamic law. He was careful to say he is no scholar of Islamic law. What he did understand, he said, was that debasing money is a form of theft, and that it hurts most the people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
Two Billion People and a Question About Money
To close the story, the show turned to Marty Bent's TFTC newsletter, which had also covered the Forbes piece. Bent compared it to the stories in the Bible about Jesus and the money changers, noting that Islamic finance requires that the money Muslims use is not debt based. By acknowledging Bitcoin as Sharia compliant, he wrote, the Omani government was sending a signal that would push more people to research why, and to look harder at the fiat system.
Bent saw the Exahertz expansion as good news on two fronts: Bitcoin mining hashrate was becoming more geographically distributed, and Bitcoin was being recognized as in accordance with Islamic law, which he said opens the market to almost two billion people.
Bitcoin is officially being recognized as in accordance with Islamic law
· 7:24
That number stayed with the host. Two billion out of roughly 8 billion people, he said, would be a monumental shift if they began asking why they use money that loses value and found that an alternative had already been working for more than a decade. He said he would love to see that realization spread, and to see how many others followed.
He ended on the bigger picture as it looked in August 2023, with the 2024 halving approaching, ETF filings from BlackRock, Fidelity and others in the news, and now a nation state getting involved with Bitcoin. Things were happening in real time, he said, and it was exciting to watch.
The conversation continues at Mining Disrupt 2027, March 22 to 24 in Irving, Texas.