Court held between Sturle Sunde and Nordea

Photo: ALEKSANDER ÅSNES / NRK

The background for the recent court case is that Nordea refuse to open business account for largest Bitcoin trader in Norway. The court was held on the 19. and 20. April.

Sturle Sunde is by far the most trusted and reputable Bitcoin trader in Norway. With a rapidly growing trading volume, his platform has successfully operated since 2010. http://bitmynt.no/ is a manual, non-automated exchange that allows customers to exchange Bitcoin for Norwegian Kroners run by Sturle Sunde.

When he applied for a business account at the banking giant Nordea he was not allowed due to fear of money laundring. Nordea argues that Bitcoin may be used for money laundring and other criminal activity. Their opening statement in the court said that based on information from Kripos (Norwegian special crime unit) - Bitcoin users were either criminals, computer programmers, libertarians og anarchist.

Sturle Sunde argues that Bitcoin is not anonymous and that he use freeware tools to identify potentially criminal transactions. He is also developing a service that enables users to identify with BANK-ID, the Norwegian system for identification when logging into online banking services.

Estimates show that aprox. 200.000 norwegians own crypto assets, about 5 percent of the entire population. The same number for stock-owners are 300.000. Crypto is obviously becoming popular as an investement other that stocks among the younger part of the population.

The court will give the verdict in 14 days.