Inside Europe's Secret Bitcoin Country

Europe is at war with Bitcoin. The UK's former Prime Minister [music] and world-class buffoon, Boris Johnson, called Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme. Germany [music] panic sold 4 billion euros worth of BTC. And our European Central Banking head, Christine Lagarde, she still says [music] inane bollocks about Bitcoin. I still of the view that there is no intrinsic value and there is no underlying value to it. The EU is rolling out regulation after regulation. Most of the people living in London or Berlin or Budapest could not name a single Bitcoin company in their city. Sure, there's activity in Madeira, there's a lot in Switzerland, and there's Prague, but most of Europe is a bit of a Bitcoin [music] graveyard. Except for one country, one that nobody is talking about, and it's quietly doing more for Bitcoin than anywhere [music] else in Europe. This country has Bitcoin heated towns, a pop-up Bitcoin store in the capital, one of the original cypherpunks who spoke directly with Satoshi Nakamoto, and a growing grassroots Bitcoin movement that puts the rest of Europe to shame. So, I [music] spent 24 hours in Helsinki with this Finnish guy called Remu to find out why Finland is the unsung hero of Bitcoin [music] in Europe. But before we can heat up in the Finnish Bitcoin sauna, let's go back to where it all began for me. Welcome to BTC Hell. >> Welcome. This is the BTC Hell Hub. BTC Hell is a pop-up Bitcoin space in the heart of Helsinki. It's part store, part co-working hub, part [music] community center, and honestly, every major city in Europe should have one of these. Coming up, we'll meet the guy who sold 5,000 BTC for this. When you start thinking you could be the richest man in Finland if you had never sold. >> We'll try to break a metal seed plate, and we'll learn what this word means. Naapurisi saattaa olla joku hikke. My name [music] is Jona Nakamoto, and I investigate Bitcoin all around the world. Hit subscribe if you like the sound of that. Let me show you around. There is no second best. There is no second best. Downstairs, there's what they call the community space. There's a Bitcoin library, a tinkering corner where you can buy no KYC Bitcoin from a coin machine, and then spend your sats on sweets from a vending machine. They run workshops teaching people how to run their own node. They even host monthly poker nights. Buy-in paid in sats, obviously. Buy-in is one Bitcoin, yes. One Bitcoin? No, I'm joking. High rollers, nice. Sounds good. Boomer death. Yeah, the old world is going to burn and the new world is going to rise from the ashes. Remu built all of this without outside funding. He picked up the phone, he cold called Bitcoin companies to sponsor booths at the BTC Hell event. He sold early bird tickets and reinvested. It's pure grassroots hustle. He now works with Bull Bitcoin in Finland. I'm friends with Bull Bitcoin, no sponsorship money, but I once carried a sloth with the founder of Bull. Subscribe for that story, by the way. They sell all sorts of Bitcoin things from hardware wallets to metal, supposedly indestructible seed plates. There are loads of Bitcoin books in Chinese. Well, obviously the Bitcoin books are in Finnish, but they might as well be in Chinese. I mean, look at this language. >> Naapurisi saattaa olla joku hikke. >> It means your neighbor might be rich already. Consensus network started from Finland, so a lot of Bitcoin companies start from Finland. >> As well as Finnish-designed Bitcoin products. There's a wall of provocative posters they plastered all over Helsinki. Things like >> Think about it, the money in your bank, it is not yours, it is not in the bank, and it's not even money. Oh, and that doormat when you walk into BTC Hell, it's actually Christine Lagarde's face. Make of that what you will. Now, BTC Hell is cool, Bitcoin cocktail bar and poker table cool, but this pop-up store is not even the most impressive thing that Finland is doing with Bitcoin. Not by a long shot. Here's something that still blows my mind. Finland is heating entire towns with Bitcoin mining. A company called Miners Loop and some other Finnish companies, some public, some have chosen to stay secret, they are quietly plugging in to Finland's district heating infrastructure with Bitcoin miners. That's the network of underground pipes that already distributes heat to every major Finnish city. Instead of burning gas or oil, you're running SHA-256 and warming people's homes. So, Miners Loop, they are do the doing the gorge work because they are heating the homes and we are really cold. And it doesn't stop at homes. There are companies in Finland building Bitcoin heated saunas, jacuzzis, and hot tubs. Last year, Remu was actually in one of those Bitcoin miner heated jacuzzis. Now, I'm not going to go deep on how this works. >> [laughter] >> I've already covered Bitcoin mining in Finland in depth in two videos on this channel. What's staggering is the scale of it, especially when you compare Bitcoin in Finland to how it's treated in other so-called developed European nations. Part of the reason why Finland is so far ahead is Fingrid, their national grid operator. >> [music] >> Finland generates a huge amount of renewable energy, and renewables, as you know, are intermittent. [music] You need flexible load to balance the grid. Bitcoin miners are perfect for that. They can ramp up when there's excess wind or solar generation, and they can power down when energy demand spikes. They are so flexible. We can stop stop everything down in seconds. The additional value that with the miners more than the AIS is demand response. Yeah, yeah. Because a lot of the energy is generated from renewable energies in Finland. Remu told me they're now planning a European mining summit in Helsinki. Because, let's be real, Helsinki is the mining capital of Europe. >> It's not Lisbon, London, >> or Budapest. It's Helsinki. It's going to be hosted in Helsinki because this is the capital of mining. Now, if you know your Bitcoin history better than Vitalik knows how to mine Ethereum, Martti Malmi's name should ring a bell. Martti Malmi is a Finnish developer who was one of the very first people to work directly with Satoshi Nakamoto on Bitcoin's code. I called him up to ask why. So, I was passionate about freedom. I didn't believe in politics or [music] politicians, so I want I figured we could we had better chances of changing the world through technology. Bitcoin was the only properly decentralized [music] thing out there. Martti is about as OG as it gets. I found it in late April 2009 and sent the email to Satoshi and offered my help. And here's something a lot of people don't know. Everyone talks about Laszlo's pizzas as the first Bitcoin transaction. >> [music] >> But months before Pizza Day, in October 2009, Martti sold 5,050 Bitcoin for $5.02. That was the first time Bitcoin was ever given a market price, roughly a tenth of a cent per coin. Do you remember that day? Is that a day that's quite vivid in your memory? No, no, not really. Not really. It was just another day to sell 5,000 Bitcoin. Yes, yes. I was living in my student dorm, but I wasn't bothering myself with the studying thing too much, so I had a lot of free time. Often times I would uh stay up all night and work on Bitcoin or something. Then, in 2011, when the exchange rate peaked at around 15 to $30, Martti sold over 10,000 Bitcoin and used the money to buy a studio apartment near Helsinki. He was 22 years old. Um at least I got more than two pizzas, so can't really complain. I asked him how he feels about it now. Well, obviously I was very happy about it. I never imagined even like being able to buy my own apartment, so I was pretty pretty damn happy about it. Could be worse. >> [laughter] >> When you start thinking you could be the richest man in Finland if you had never sold, but if you compare to where I started, it's not so bad. At least I got more than two pizzas. You know what would have been useful to Martti Malmi back in 2011? A way to access those 10,000 coins and their value without necessarily selling them. That is basically what Xapo Bank helps you with. They are a members-only private bank for Bitcoin holders, fully licensed, regulated in Gibraltar. And they've been custodying Bitcoin almost as long as Martti Malmi, since 2013. Wow. You can take a loan against your Bitcoin without selling it. No rehypothecation, your coins stay in your custody. Xapo offers another way to stack sats. Thank you to Xapo for sponsoring this segment in the ice bath, and do check them out at the link below. Back to the video. I didn't join Bitcoin to get rich or anything. That wasn't the point. It was just a byproduct of Satoshi asking me to keep my node running. It's just a byproduct of Satoshi asking me to keep my node running. Is that not the most Finnish sentence you've ever heard? I mean, how humble. What a legend. He's now working on Bitcoin-incentivized VPN infrastructure through Nostr. Try saying that after a few beers. He got pulled back into the community through the Nostr scene, and now he's at the Sovereign Engineering Cohort in Madeira writing code. 15 years later, and he's still shipping. Oh, and he's also doing his bit for merchant adoption. It turns out that Martti is a regular customer at the Bitcoin butcher I visited in Helsinki. I'm a regular customer. I like 30 kilos of minced meat every month. 30 kilos? >> Yeah. What do you do with all that meat? Yeah, I often uh do the carnivore. It's just so convenient and healthy. Just have your freezer full of minced meat. Martti is also, by the way, a rock star, and his favorite band is Children of Bodom, which is obviously Finnish. I've had the privilege of playing with him on stage. But that's a story for another day. Do you remember Local Bitcoins? This peer-to-peer marketplace that was actually one of the most important platforms in Bitcoin history. Naturally, it was founded by a Finn called Jeremias Kangas. Such a good name. Local Bitcoins was no KYC, no corporate middlemen. Just two people meeting up in a cafe to trade cash for coin. So cool. [music] So Finnish. I traded coin for that metal seat plate at the BTC held office, and I paid in Bitcoin. Here it is. I open up my wonderful Bitkit wallet. Says it's 43 pounds to pay, and you'll see it's that quick. [music] And they both have confetti, which is nice. The wallet I used is Bitkit, and if you scan this QR code right now quickly, cuz it's limited to the first 21 people, then you might win some free Bitcoin. But be quick, and thank you to [music] Bitkit for sponsoring this segment. Download Bitkit anyway. Here's something that really struck me. When I was filming my previous video inside Finland's secret Bitcoin mines, I did street interviews with random Finnish people about Bitcoin mining. >> Did you know anything about Bitcoin mining before today? And I could not find a single person with a strong negative opinion. Interesting, yes. I think it's positive. Positive. It's positive. Positive. Good. Just think about that for a second, because in the UK, where I'm from, you can't go 10 minutes without someone, whether it's a former prime minister or a technophobic Financial Times columnist, saying something ignorant, incorrect, [music] and indescribably silly about Bitcoin. >> My teeth are pretty scarce and pretty useful, but they're not worth billions of bucks. In Finland, nothing. Nada. >> [music] >> Just thoughtful, measured responses. Why? I think it's cultural. Finland has a long history of technology and privacy, [music] and that culture extends to how they treat energy and innovation. This is the country that gave us Linux, it gave us SSH, and it gave us Nokia. Hello. Yeah, the cypherpunk ethos is not some niche internet thing here. It's kind of embedded in Finnish culture. Yeah, catch you later. It's not actually on. I'm just acting. Bro. I think Finns are like traditionally great engineers, but not not such great businessmen. >> [laughter] >> There's many stories of Finnish innovations being sold to the US for pennies, and then they become like a billion-dollar businesses [music] overseas or something. While other European countries are banning mining or taxing it into oblivion, Finland is integrating it into their national grid. >> [music] >> Indeed, while the EU debates whether Bitcoin is an environmental disaster with MiCA, Finland is proving it's part of the solution. Full disclosure, I hosted BTC held last year, so naturally, I think it's awesome. But bias aside, this event punches way above its weight. It brought together hardcore Bitcoiners, miners, developers, and here's the kicker, Finnish politicians. Actual elected officials on stage at a Bitcoin event in Finland. Try doing that with all the folks in Westminster or the lovely people of the Bundestag. Now, before you book your flights to Helsinki and start a new life as a sauna-loving, reindeer-munching Finnish Bitcoiner, Am I Finnish? let's talk about what's not working. Pull up BTC map and look at Finland. >> [music] >> The number of merchants accepting Bitcoin? It's not a lot. When you look at the BTC map, I don't think there's too many places in Helsinki, for instance, where you can pay with Bitcoin. For all the mining infrastructure, that OG community energy, the merchant adoption on the ground in Finland, it's actually rather low. Finland is a highly banked nation. Nearly everyone uses cards or mobile payments, and getting Finns to actually spend sats at the point of sale is clearly still a challenge. Then there are the tax laws. Finland's capital gains tax with regards to crypto is by no means the worst in Europe, but it's not exactly a regime that encourages Bitcoin to be used as everyday money. You're essentially triggering a taxable event every time you use Bitcoin to buy a coffee. And Christine Lagarde Matt, she really wants you to declare that two-cent gain you made on Bitcoin just then. Oh, yeah. So Finland isn't some Bitcoin Utopia. The mining infrastructure is excellent, the community is OG and strong, and the culture is clearly there. It kind of meshes with Bitcoin's culture. But the on-the-ground adoption, there's still a long way to go. Finland isn't loud about Bitcoin. [music] They don't have a president tweeting about strategic reserves or a country putting Bitcoin on legal tender billboards. But quietly, methodically, and in their own very Finnish way, I think they're doing it better than anyone else in Europe. [music] They've got the mining, they've got the infrastructure, they've got the OGs, and they've got people like Remu, like Lou, like many others who I'd love to name, but come on, you guys love privacy. >> [music] >> And they're building from the ground up, one cold caller at a time. Is Finland Europe's only [music] hope for Bitcoin? Maybe. Maybe not. But right now, nobody else is even close. Please hit the like button. Hit subscribe if you like this, and check out the above video for another deep dive into Bitcoin around [music] the world. So I'm warmer, I hope.