Bitmynt, Norway's first bitcoin exchange, closes permanently on June 16 after founder Sturle Sunde decides not to apply for a MiCA license. Customers are offered a move to Bare Bitcoin, but no customer data is shared or sold.
«MiCA is unreasonable,» Sturle Sunde writes on X, but ends the post with: «Bitcoin is in good hands without Bitmynt. Thanks for everything, and thanks for the trade!»
Sunde argues that MiCA imposes the same requirements on Bitmynt as on financial institutions responsible for other people's money – even though Bitmynt, by his own account, is purely an exchange and not a custody service. The case shows how quickly the rules are reshaping the market structure for crypto services in the Nordics: from July 1, the threshold for running a simple exchange without a license, capital requirements, and reporting obligations effectively disappears.
Bitmynt's history goes back to 2010. Sunde writes that no regulation existed at the time, and that bitcoin was widely seen as «toy money online». He began offering informal exchange between bitcoin and Norwegian kroner via the IRC channel #bitcoin-otc, since exchanges like Mt. Gox lacked banking ties and were difficult for Norwegians to use. By autumn 2013, his income from automated trading had outgrown his regular salary, and he quit his job to run Bitmynt AS full-time.
The following years were spent in what he describes as a long fight against the banks, including closed accounts and a lawsuit against Nordea. When Norway introduced anti-money-laundering rules for crypto in October 2018, Bitmynt, by his account, finally secured a working bank relationship. Sunde writes that the law meant more work but was not unreasonable – a contrast he draws explicitly with MiCA.
The core of the criticism is that MiCA, from July 1, imposes the same requirements on Bitmynt as on financial institutions responsible for other people's money, even though the company has never held custody of customers' bitcoin. Sunde writes that the goal was never to become something resembling a bank, but to run a simple exchange where customers hold their own keys.
He describes the requirements as a product of red tape and formalistic procedures, arguing that the model remains possible in principle under MiCA – but considerably harder to run in practice for a small operator.
It's a calibrated criticism: according to Sunde, the 2018 law's requirements were demanding but reasonable. MiCA, in his view, goes further than necessary for a pure exchange that never holds customer funds.
Sunde writes that less serious competitors have come and gone since he started in 2010, but that he now faces «good competition» in the industry – partly because he himself has supported several of them with liquidity and investment. His second original goal, making Norwegians independent of a bank account with only a bitcoin wallet and their own keys, he says was not achieved, without elaborating on why.
In his view, the stronger competitive landscape makes it safer to wind down now than before: Bitmynt is no longer the single weak point banks could target to effectively shut bitcoin out of Norway.
Several parties have reached out to buy Bitmynt's customer base, according to Sunde, both directly and through attempts to acquire the entire company. He rejects this, citing the company's privacy policy, which prohibits disclosing customer information without a legal requirement to do so. Acquiring the company, in his view, would have been a way around that same condition.
Customer data will be deleted as soon as Bitmynt is legally permitted to do so.
Instead of a sale, Bitmynt has set up a voluntary referral arrangement with the exchange Bare Bitcoin, which also offers custody and its own app alongside exchange services. Customers who sign up through Bitmynt's referral link get six months of expanded benefits, according to the announcement, including fee-free trading up to NOK 21,000 a month and free withdrawals. Bitmynt states that no customer information is shared with Bare Bitcoin beyond the company being able to see that a user came via the link.
Open orders at Bitmynt will be settled over the coming weeks, and the website will remain available for a period so customers can retrieve their trading history. The company expects some downtime in July as it winds down its infrastructure.
Sunde sums it up himself: he «wanted to work with Bitcoin, not with law, red tape, formalistic procedures and absurd requirements» – and that it's therefore time to move on.
Sources: Bitmynt, BPI Norge
Listen more (in Norwegian): The podcast Bitcoinsnakk ran a three-part series with Sturle Sunde in 2025, and Sunde took part in a Satoshi conversation hosted by BPI Norge on Bitcoin and Norway's constitution.
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