Is exchanging currency and hoarding it, waiting for the price to rise and become expensive, then taking it out and selling it at that time, permissible or not?

The questioner : Shaykh, in these days, the issue of the drop in the price of the dinar and the rise in the price of the dollar, and similar matters, is not hidden from you. Some questions have come to me, and I would like to benefit from you, my teacher.

The Shaykh : Please go ahead.
Al-Halabi : Regarding people who told you that we want to exchange dinars for dollars and hide them in order to make it a currency trade, what is the basis for the permissibility or prohibition in such a case?

The Shaykh : Trading, it is not permissible for us, but exchanging currency is permissible out of necessity.
Al-Halabi : I mean, like for trade or something similar.

The Shaykh : I mean, in the circumstance you described, if a person has money and fears for it, he exchanges it for something stronger, then this is permissible, but not with the intention of trade; rather, the intention is to escape from loss.
Al-Halabi : Yes, yes. But if, for example, a person exchanges now, and the dinar is down, and after a while it might become expensive, so the dinar becomes, for example, one hundred Syrian pounds, so he exchanges, for example, one hundred dinars for one thousand four hundred Syrian pounds, or for fourteen thousand pounds, on the basis that he will buy goods from Syria later, and the pound is cheap, so what about this case?

The Shaykh : No problem, but he should not buy the Syrian currency now because it is cheap in order to hoard it with him, so that when it becomes expensive, he buys with it what suits him. Trading in the same currency is not permissible except out of necessity. But buying goods from one country to another in the local currency, that is something else.
Al-Halabi : Okay, my Shaykh, what is the basis for the prohibition of currency trading? The evidence, I mean?

The Shaykh : It is that this currency, and it is not hidden from you, has no intrinsic value...
Al-Halabi : Yes, its value is in gold or other things.

The Shaykh : So when you buy paper currency with paper currency, it is as if you are buying gold with gold.
Al-Halabi: Correct.

The Shaykh : And here, at that time, the two known conditions in the Sunnah are obligatory: hand-to-hand, and like-for-like. But now, there is no like-for-like.
Al-Halabi : Correct, it has changed.

The Shaykh : Due to this drop and decrease, and therefore we permit it out of necessity, not for trade.
Al-Halabi : May Allah reward you with good, my Shaykh, and may Allah bless you.

The Shaykh : And beware of that.