Safello, Firi and K33 are among the Nordic companies that have now secured MiCA licences, but that's only the starting gun: the real fight is now over professional clients — institutions and private banking. Kvarn, Coinmotion and BTCX are racing too.
Kaupr has mapped how some of the players in the Nordics are positioning themselves. Top row, from left: Thuc Hoang (Firi), Frank Schuil (Safello) and Torbjørn Bull Jenssen (K33). Bottom row, from left: Joonas Järvinen (Kvarn X), Antti-Jussi Suominen (Coinmotion) and Christian Ander (Goobit/BTCX).
Most people probably think first of the battle for retail clients when MiCA and crypto regulation come up — there are already 2.5 million adults in the Nordics who own crypto. But away from the big headlines, an equally interesting battle is playing out over institutions and private banking clients. Safello, Firi and K33 are among the Nordic companies that have now secured their MiCA licences, but the licence is only the starting gun: the battle is now over who can convert that approval into actual clients among banks, wealth managers and institutions.
Kvarn, Coinmotion and BTCX are in this same battle for the same big clients, and Norway's listed NBX, alongside Sweden's Trijo and Finland's North Crypto — both owned by Sweden's listed GreenMerc — are likely to join the game too. The MiCA framework — the EU's rules for crypto-assets, which apply across the EU/EEA — has made it possible to build this kind of offering across borders. Since MiCA, it's no longer only ETF and ETP providers that can claim to offer crypto exposure in regulated form — now crypto-native companies can say the same. The battle for these particular clients looks set to be fiercest in Sweden, the Nordics' largest and most mature capital market.
Safello is clearly going after the banks themselves. Frank Schuil, who founded the company, recently returned as CEO after three years as chairman focused on the MiCA licence, and his goal, according to an interview with Kaupr, is for Safello to become the preferred partner for Swedish banks, wealth managers and other financial institutions entering crypto. The retail platform still accounts for most of the revenue, but it's with institutions that he sees the biggest growth opportunity.
He points to the home-market advantage as decisive: Safello is so far the only player with a MiCA licence from Sweden's Finansinspektionen, on top of deep roots in the local financial sector. He believes that combination gives an edge both against other Swedish exchanges and against Nordic and global players entering Sweden. Within two to three years, his goal is for Safello to have achieved an institutional breakthrough that can be exported across the rest of Europe with the MiCA licence in hand.
Firi is already by far the Nordics' largest retail player, with over 400,000 customers since 2017 — but that's only half the picture. As early as last autumn, CEO Thuc Hoang teased in an interview with Kaupr that the company had plans for a new business area, more in the B2B direction, and it has since emerged that Firi has quietly run an OTC service for institutional and wealthy clients for more than four years, now reinforced by Robert Stephan Eikheim as Chief Revenue Officer.
In May, Firi received MiCA approval from Norway's Finanstilsynet — confirmation, says Hoang, that the company has done something right. Sweden is now Firi's third Nordic market after Norway and Denmark, led by country manager Ted Scheiman, and the ambition is twofold: to build the leading regulated crypto platform for the retail market, while also luring Swedish investors, who have so far mostly encountered crypto through regulated ETPs rather than direct trading, onto a regulated platform.
K33 secured its MiCA licence this week, the third of the three companies in the Nordics to do so, after Safello last autumn and Firi in May, and intends to use it for partnerships, infrastructure collaborations and acquisitions across the EEA. Through its partnership with Pensum Asset Management, the company has already gained access to wealthy individuals, family offices and institutional investors in Norway.
CEO Torbjørn Bull Jenssen is clear that K33 isn't chasing retail clients, but wealthy individuals, family offices and institutions "not necessarily tied to a specific jurisdiction." "We're a sniper. We don't serve smaller retail clients. That's the only thing we do," he says in an interview with Kaupr. He expects growth to come mainly through partnerships, where banks connect to a licensed player like K33 instead of building it themselves, and expects it will take years before the big banks go "all in" — it's independent wealth managers and smaller private banks that will take the step first.
In Finland, five companies have held MiCA licences for more than six months already, Kvarn and Coinmotion among them. Kvarn stands out with the broadest platform of the six: global stocks, funds, more than 400 cryptocurrencies and tokenised assets such as Kvarn X Gold all under one roof, plus alternative investment funds (AIFs) for professional investors through Kvarn Asset Management. That breadth rests on an equally broad licence — CASP, a payment licence (PSP) and MiFID II authorisation combined — which co-founder Joonas Järvinen believes makes Kvarn one of very few players in the EU built for genuine cross-border scaling. That edge is now being used to expand from Finland into Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
Coinmotion is also pushing hard into institutional clients, with brokerage, OTC trading, research and advisory, secured lending, custody and payment services aimed at investment firms, funds, family offices and wealth managers. At the turn of the year, the company also launched in Sweden, initially targeting the retail segment. The launch is based on its Finnish CASP licence, passported into the Swedish market and led there by country manager Christer Ekman. The company is thus underway with the same Nordic expansion as the other players in this story.
BTCX and parent company Goobit Group are building their push around Private Banking and a pure bitcoin-focused OTC service for companies, institutions and wealthy individuals who require discretion, security and professional execution. Since the turn of the year, Goobit has traded around 480 bitcoin through BTCX, equivalent to around €31 million — "a clear increase in demand for professional OTC services," according to Christian Ander, CEO and founder of Goobit Group. The company is building further on Goobit's long operating history and MiCA culture as the basis for customer trust.
Goobit has also launched its own consolidation and M&A strategy for the Nordic crypto market, in an interview on Kaupr TV with Ander. He points out that international players such as Coinbase, Bybit and Binance are looking toward the Nordics, and that Goobit, after nearly 15 years in the market, wants to take an active role in a coming consolidation phase — through acquisitions, mergers or partnerships. The collaboration with K33 is working very well, he says, and will be developed further, and he sketches out an ideal Nordic structure with a presence in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.
In Sweden, the players meet head-on. Safello is on its own home turf, MiCA licence in hand, and wants to become the banks' gateway to crypto. Firi has already announced its entry into Sweden, and now K33 too confirms that Sweden, alongside the other Nordic countries, is priority market number one. Sweden is the country that, according to the Nordic Crypto Adoption Survey, has shown the strongest growth in crypto adoption in 2026, and the country is both the largest in the Nordics and the most developed capital market, with a strong digital culture. Whoever wins the battle in Sweden could determine who ends up as banks' and wealth managers' preferred gateway to the crypto market across the Nordics.
Sources: Safello, Firi, K33, Kvarn, Coinmotion, BTCX
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