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no, they are not "ahead" *), at least not in a good way: these utopist societies are only far ahead on the War against Cash though and already about to criminalise the use of bills and coins. Privacy has never been much of a concern in Nordic "culture". Populations in all Nordic countries have a tendency to blindly believe in their governments and place an unreasonable amount of trust in politicians; hence they do not object moves like these. (To be fair, Norwegians are a little less idiotic than the Swedish though.)

In light of that, it makes perfect sense to "allow" Bitcoin into the "sacred" banking scene now. Along with Swish and other cellphone-to-cellphone (albeit central-server-hosted) solutions maybe... On top, why would you really want to hold your money in a Norwegian bank (now as bankrupt and under-capitalised as the rest of the fiat currency system, after Norwegian bank capitalisation collapsed from 8-odd percent to just 2.1% over a year ago) when, instead, Bitcoin and all p2p decentralised Crypto coins allow you to "Be Your Own Bank"?!

Still a nice experiment there at Skandiabanken. Thank you @fyrstikken for sharing. Curious to see how this plays out and what it might lead to...

*) that Swedes, Norwegians etc are "so ahead" is one of those common stereotypes touted by people who never had to live in these boring, egalitarian, feminist, and utopian societies. They are beautiful countries with great nature -- Norway actually claiming to be powered by it :) , which part of the world isn't... -- but many people there behave like children and are painfully short of real-life knowledge, interpersonal skills and common sense.