When Thuc Hoang and his co-founder Øyvind Kvanes started building Firi in 2017, they did it to solve a personal problem: How to buy crypto in Norway.
By 2021, the exchange had 100,000 users. Today, that number has grown four times to over 400,000, making it the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the Nordics by volume, despite the company having less funding than many competitors.
In 2024, the exchange opened its office in Denmark.
Thuc Hoang sat down with Nordic Fintech Magazine and told us how it all began.
Bitcoin’s journey from distrust to respect in the Nordics
Crypto was in its “Wild West” phase in 2017, and massively distrusted by Nordic banks. It didn’t help that Bitcoin’s price started crashing at the end of 2017 after hitting an all-time high of $19,345 on December 16. A year later, it lost almost 82% of its value, and it wouldn’t surpass its previous all-time high until the end of 2020, two years later.
Although Bitcoin isn’t yet treated as a first-class asset by the banking sector, its staying power and resilience have earned it respect. The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, launched a Bitcoin ETF in 2024, which many in the industry considered the green flag for institutional investors to start taking Bitcoin seriously.
In the Nordics, the tide has likewise shifted, largely driven by MiCAR (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation), which gives the banking sector clear guardrails when dealing with cryptocurrency assets.
Supported by MiCAR regulatory clarity, Nordea rolled out Bitcoin-linked ETPs (Exchange-Traded Products) to clients in December 2025, and Danske Bank followed in February 2026, ending its internal eight-year ban on cryptocurrency trading.
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DNB, Norway’s largest bank, held its inaugural Digital Asset Summit in Oslo in 2025, convening over 200 TradFi and crypto minds to discuss digital assets and cryptocurrency. Firi was also present at the summit, where Thuc participated as a member of discussion panels and in interviews.
The change in the Nordic banking sector’s attitude is significant when viewed in the light of the 2017 era of distrust.
Buying crypto in the Nordics in 2017, and why Firi was formed
In 2017, Norwegians couldn’t buy cryptocurrency locally without jumping through numerous hoops. No one could pay in their local currency, and users had to use bank-issued credit or debut cards which charged enormous forex fees.
In some cases, the banks would block the cards.
Foreign crypto platforms required users to upload passports for KYC, which feels antiquated and slow in the Nordics.
“The Nordics are extremely evolved digitally,” Thuc says. “Everyone has a digital ID, and we use MitID or NemID to log in to banking services. I’m not a finance guy. I have a tech background, and I asked myself, ‘Why don’t they just use the existing systems already in place?’ Firi started out of that technical curiosity.”
NemID and MitID refer to the digital ID systems used in Denmark (NemID has since been phased out by MitID, but was active in 2017). Sweden and Norway have similar systems called BankID, as do Finland and Iceland. In the Nordics, signing up for services that require identification is as simple as pulling out your digital ID app, logging in, and it’s done.
Adding to the friction, almost no foreign exchanges provided services locally. “Some OTC trade desks existed for large trades,” says Thuc. “The rest were small brokers.”
Thuc would often need to send Euros to some foreign entity, then wait days for the trade to finalize. Not only was that immensely annoying, it also meant that trades were subject to slippage, which can be significant in a volatile asset class.
“We tailored our service
to the Norwegian way of
thinking, and wanted to
build a service for people
just like us.”
Thuc Hoang
CEO & Founder at Firi
In addition to these challenges, Firi’s founders felt that traditional banking was slow. Despite the Nordic zone’s technological advancement, the banking sector remained tethered to legacy rules and systems. “Banks closed at four, and it wasn’t possible to send money across borders easily,” says Thuc. “For me, it was important to build a product that users wanted to use, and that’s open 24/7. That’s quite different from what people in the Nordics have come to expect of their financial institutions.”
Firis founders knew that their solution needed to be built on trust, which crypto-trading severely lacked at the time.
“We’re a fully regulated and compliant entity, and that’s been our goal from the start. We even built a system that lets you fully calculate your crypto taxes on the platform,” says Thuc.
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Nordic taxes are known for being complex, and taxes on cryptocurrency assets are especially so. At one stage, Denmark even floated the idea of charging a capital gains tax on crypto assets, even if those gains had not been realized, i.e., if the person still held the asset.
Firi’s system provides a free tax calculator to all users. They can immediately see what they owe without any additional work.
“We built that because we needed it ourselves,” says Thuc. “I’d spend hours trying to calculate my taxes on a spreadsheet, so we built a tool, and now our users have it as well.”
Building trust through education and simplicity
Thuc believes that Firi, which means “lighthouse” in Old Norse, played a pivotal role in ushering Norway into an era where crypto is both acceptable and easy to trade. The reason for that is that Firi had no interest in the “Wild West” aspect of crypto. Its founders simply wanted to trade crypto, and wanted to do it compliantly.
They also wanted others to be able to trade crypto easily, which is why Firi’s platform educates users about cryptocurrency with detailed blog posts and help articles explaining what crypto is and how to trade it.
The result is that the exchange has grown faster than any other in the area. “Nordic Blockchain Association and K33 did a study on the Nordic market and discovered that 44% of the respondents were Firi clients,” says Thuc. “Competitors have failed to achieve so much traction despite being better funded.”
Thuc believes Firi’s immense success is because of the company’s dedication to creating an excellent UX, and its willingness to work with banks, regulators, and governments to help with compliance and tax reporting.
“We tailored our service to the Norwegian way of thinking, and wanted to build a service for people just like us.”
MiCAR levels the playing field
As a long-term, regulated, and trusted player in the Nordics, Firi now has a new potential advantage against global players: MiCAR.
Before MiCAR, no unified EU-wide crypto regulation for exchanges and service providers existed. Crypto fell into a patchwork of national rules. Some EU countries had their own licensing or registration structures, while others had almost nothing or very light requirements.
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Now, everyone has to play according to the same rules.
“At Firi, we have an advantage because we’ve always been regulated, and the Nordics are among the most stringent in crypto regulation, so we always built for that,” says Thuc. “Additionally, we have full support for local integrations, such as digital ID, which gives us an edge over companies that haven’t yet started to implement that.”
MiCAR levels the playing field for all, allowing exchanges of all sizes to compete on equal footing.
And Firi has a massive headstart in the Nordics.
