The Most Significant Finnish Cryptocurrency Figures

Did you know that Finland has produced several well-known figures in the cryptocurrency world? Among them is a Bitcoin developer who assisted Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of a peer-to-peer lending service managing cryptocurrencies valued at over 16 billion euros, and the founder of a Bitcoin trading platform once used by nearly 10 million people.

              
Most Significant Cryptocurrency Figures
Globally, there are many prominent cryptocurrency figures, such as Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. These and five others were introduced in a blog post we published about a year ago titled Key Figures in the Cryptocurrency World. In this blog post, we focus on three significant Finnish cryptocurrency figures.

Martti Malmi
Martti Malmi is the most well-known Finnish figure in Bitcoin, having served as a Bitcoin developer during its early years. Malmi started programming at the age of 12 and later studied computer science at university. Bitcoin began operating in January 2009, and by May of the same year, Malmi started to explore it and mine Bitcoin. Malmi also contacted Bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, and began assisting him with various Bitcoin-related matters.

One of Malmi’s most notable contributions to Bitcoin history is the first-ever Bitcoin-to-dollar trade. In October 2009, Malmi sold 5,050 bitcoins for $5.02, meaning each bitcoin was valued at about $0.001. Beyond this, Malmi made significant contributions to Bitcoin in its early years, including being one of its few developers, adding features to Bitcoin’s code, and fixing bugs. Malmi also maintained the most well-known Bitcoin website, Bitcoin.org, as well as the most popular Bitcoin forum, BitcoinTalk. His writings on these sites were among the first to advocate for the value and use of Bitcoin.

In addition to the first Bitcoin trade, Malmi was also behind the first Bitcoin marketplace, Bitcoinmarket, which he established in March 2010, contributing over 30,000 bitcoins he mined to provide liquidity. Bitcoinmarket played a crucial role in growing the number of people who owned bitcoin in its early years.

In 2011, Malmi also likely made history by purchasing an apartment with funds from bitcoin sales. He sold over 10,000 bitcoins at approximately $15–$30 each and used the proceeds to buy a studio apartment near Helsinki. This was a major accomplishment for 22-year-old Malmi, who previously had little money. In hindsight, this may well have been the world’s most expensive studio apartment, as those 10,000 bitcoins are now worth over 850 million euros. Malmi has recently stated that he still owns some bitcoin.

Malmi ceased active involvement with Bitcoin in 2012, as he felt that the atmosphere around Bitcoin was no longer as exciting and innovative as in its early days when Bitcoin’s potential was yet unrealized. Since then, he has focused on projects supporting freedom and privacy and has occasionally shared his views on Bitcoin.

Jeremias Kangas
Jeremias Kangas founded the LocalBitcoins trading platform in 2012, during Bitcoin’s early years. Kangas had already developed an interest in Bitcoin, purchasing it around the time it was priced at $1, likely in early 2011. Thus, he is certainly one of the first Finns to learn about and purchase Bitcoin.

Kangas’s LocalBitcoins was a peer-to-peer platform where users could buy and sell bitcoin directly with one another. Transactions on LocalBitcoins were secured by escrow accounts. In practice, this means that when a buyer and seller agree on a transaction to sell bitcoin, for example for euros, the amount of bitcoin to be sold is locked into an escrow account. The buyer then sends euros to the seller and when the seller confirms receipt of the euros, the bitcoins are released from the escrow account for withdrawal to the buyer. As a peer-to-peer trading platform, LocalBitcoins attracted bitcoin investors with a particular interest in privacy.

Over the years, LocalBitcoins became popular, particularly outside Finland, and by the 2020s, it was widely recognized among bitcoin investors worldwide. By 2023, LocalBitcoins had around 8 million users in over 190 countries. However, LocalBitcoins ceased operations in early 2023, attributing the decision to the “crypto winter” period, during which trading volume and market share declined. Although LocalBitcoins is no longer active, the platform likely introduced millions of people to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Stani Kulechov
Stani Kulechov is the Finnish founder of Aave, the largest peer-to-peer lending service in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Kulechov started programming as a child and, while studying law at university, became interested in Ethereum and particularly in smart contracts, a concept central to his field of study. A smart contract is a self-executing contract that fulfills itself automatically when predefined conditions are met.

While exploring Ethereum and smart contracts, Kulechov envisioned a system allowing users to carry out actions beyond trading on the blockchain, such as lending assets with collateral. This led to the creation of ETHLend in 2017. ETHLend was one of the first DeFi services, making a significant impact on the entire DeFi sector by enabling Ethereum’s ether token lending without requiring third-party trust. In 2018, ETHLend was rebranded as Aave, which remains its name today. Aave has since grown into the most popular lending service in the cryptocurrency market, with over 16 billion euros in assets as of the time of this blog post’s publication. Kulechov and the Aave team are continuously developing the platform, with the fourth version of Aave, i.e., Aave v4, currently in development.

In addition to Aave, Kulechov is known for developing Lens Protocol, a social media service based on the Polygon platform and designed according to Web3 principles. On Lens, profiles and content are fully controlled and owned by the users, aligning with Kulechov’s vision of bringing services onto the blockchain for decentralized governance.

Summary
This blog post introduced three significant Finnish cryptocurrency figures, each leaving a unique mark on the history of cryptocurrencies. Martti Malmi and Jeremias Kangas were introduced to Bitcoin in its early years and have done things that have had a positive impact on Bitcoin's awareness and popularity on its way to becoming a globally recognized investment. Stani Kulechov, meanwhile, has played a major role in the growth of DeFi, arguably the most significant sector within cryptocurrencies.


Ville Viitaharju
Cryptocurrency specialist