In the same month, Norwegian billionaire investor Øystein Stray Spetalen has gone from rejecting Bitcoin (BTC) as a “nonsense currency” to revealing that he has joined the board of directors of Norway’s leading national crypto exchange, MiraiEx.
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Spetalen’s previous stance was that the Norwegian and European authorities should “immediately” ban cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin due to the destructive effect their mining has on the environment. In a pre-recorded interview that was screened at the DNB Invest conference on 18 March, said:
“Bitcoin today consumes as much energy as the whole of Norway. It is extremely hostile to the environment. The authorities and the EU should ban it immediately. Then CO2 emissions would be considerably reduced […] It’s nonsense. We are doing well with current payment systems. “
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However, on March 26, in an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Finansavisen, Spetalen had changed his mind. “When the facts change, I change,” he said. “I met with the founders of MiraiEx, Thuc and Øyvind, the day after the podcast recording, in early March, and I realized that I was wrong.”
