AAOIFI Shari'a screening · Reviewed September 16, 2026
Is Bullish (BLSH) stock halal in 2026?
No. Bullish screens as Not Halal (0/100, grade F) as of October 2026: per its FY2025 filings, interest on margin lending and customer funds (5.1%) plus DeFi lending yield (0.8%) put non-permissible revenue at 5.9%, just over AAOIFI's 5% ceiling, and it runs perpetual futures and options venues.
No. Bullish (BLSH), the institutional crypto exchange that listed on the NYSE in August 2025, screens as Not Halal on HalalScreener as of October 2026, scoring 0 out of 100 (grade F). It is a narrow fail on the revenue test: per its FY2025 filings, interest on margin lending, credit facilities and customer funds (5.1% of FY2025 adjusted revenue) plus DeFi lending yield (0.8%) put non-permissible revenue at 5.9%, just over the 5% AAOIFI ceiling. It also operates perpetual futures and options venues, which accounted for 8.5% of FY2025 trading volume. Its interest-bearing debt is 9.8% of market cap against the 30% ceiling.
Live screen
| Verdict | Not Halal |
| Score | 0/100 |
| Grade | F |
| Interest-bearing debt / market cap | 9.8% (< 30%) |
| Interest-bearing deposits | well clear of the limit |
| Prohibited income | over the limit |
| Screened | October 1, 2026 |
Where the fail comes from. Bullish's filings disclose interest earned on margin lending, credit facilities and customer funds at 5.1% of FY2025 adjusted revenue, and yield from DeFi lending deployments at another 0.8%. Together that is 5.9% against the 5% tolerance AAOIFI Standard 21 allows for non-permissible income. On top of the revenue test, Bullish runs perpetual futures and options venues: leveraged derivatives that made up 8.5% of its FY2025 trading volume, with the fee revenue from those venues not separately disclosed in its filings. Undisclosed revenue from a prohibited product line is itself a screening problem, since the 5.9% is therefore a floor, not a ceiling.
Why a near miss still fails. The AAOIFI income test is a threshold, not a grade curve: 5.9% is over the line, so the stock fails, the same way 5.9% alcohol revenue would fail a supermarket. The honest flip side: this verdict is more reversible than most. If Bullish wound down its interest-bearing lines and derivatives venues, or they shrank to immaterial size, the screen could pass on future filings. Verdicts are dated and re-run as new filings land, so treat the live BLSH page as the current answer and this page as the explanation of the math behind it.
The wider positions still apply. Fee income from exchanging screened spot assets is defensible on the conditional-permissibility approach, so the fail here is about interest and derivatives, not about crypto as such. Scholars who prohibit cryptocurrency altogether, per the June 2026 fatwa of Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani and co-signatories or Egypt's Dar al-Ifta, would avoid the stock regardless, and the office of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani withholds a ruling on virtual currencies and directs followers to the next most learned jurist.
If you already hold BLSH. A failed screen is not repaired by purification; the prevailing guidance in both the Sunni schools and the Ja'fari school is to exit and give away gains attributable to the prohibited activity, with timing and calculation presented to your scholar or marja. Given how close the filed numbers are, check the live screen before acting; HalalScreener screens BLSH free.
Methodology
Verdict applies the methodology of AAOIFI Shari'a Standard No. 21: Financial Papers (Shares and Bonds): qualitative screening for prohibited business activities, plus three quantitative caps. Interest-bearing debt < 30% of market cap, interest-bearing securities < 30%, and non-permissible income < 5% of revenue.
Sources and scholars
- AAOIFI Shari'a Standard No. 21: Financial Papers (Shares and Bonds)
- Bullish FY2025 filings (SEC EDGAR), revenue and volume disclosures
- Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani and co-signatories, cryptocurrency fatwa (June 2026)
- Office of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani (exit timing and calculation: consult your marja)
Frequently asked
Is Bullish (BLSH) stock halal in 2026?
No. As of the October 1, 2026 screen BLSH scores 0 out of 100 (grade F). Per its FY2025 filings, interest on margin lending and customer funds (5.1% of FY2025 adjusted revenue) plus DeFi lending yield (0.8%) total 5.9%, over AAOIFI's 5% ceiling, and Bullish also operates perpetual futures and options venues.
How close is Bullish to passing the screen?
Close on the revenue test: 5.9% non-permissible revenue in its FY2025 filings against a 5% ceiling. But the threshold is a hard line, and the fee revenue from its perpetual futures and options venues is not separately disclosed, so the true figure is at least 5.9%. If those lines shrank or closed, a future filing could flip the verdict.
Is the problem the interest or the derivatives?
Both. The disclosed interest and DeFi yield alone (5.9% of FY2025 adjusted revenue) breach the 5% income tolerance, and the perpetual futures and options venues are a prohibited product line (8.5% of FY2025 trading volume) whose revenue is not separately disclosed. Either issue would need to go away for the screen to pass.
What should I do if I already own BLSH?
A failed screen is not fixed by purification. The prevailing guidance in both the Sunni and Ja'fari schools is to exit and give away gains attributable to the prohibited activity, with timing and calculation presented to your scholar or marja. The filed numbers here are close, so re-check the live verdict first.
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