Scandinavian countries — Norway, Sweden and Finland — have a policy of total financial transparency that sees each citizen’s financial records published annually along with their names, birth date and home addresses.
While the tradition stems from a crypto-like commitment to open records and transparency, an unintended consequence is providing criminals with a “hit list” of wealthy citizens to target who have large, self-custodied crypto holdings. The move has been labeled by one Norwegian Bitcoiner as “completely insane, putting a target on the back of all of these people.”
Unlike traditional assets kept in a bank or on the stock market, self-custodied crypto is easily accessed, and transfers cannot be reversed. Funds are accessed via a private key controlled by the holders, meaning that a so-called $5 wrench attack — where criminals use physical violence or threats to force hodlers to hand over the keys — is a relatively easy method of theft.
On May 14, 2018, a Norwegian Bitcoin (BTC) millionaire narrowly escaped death after being attacked in his Oslo apartment by an assailant armed with a sawed-off shotgun. The aggressor threatened his life, demanding access to his cryptocurrency holdings.
To escape, the victim jumped from a second-floor balcony, risking serious injury. Although he sustained wounds, the 40-year-old survived the ordeal.
In Sweden, a string of assaults in recent years has seen victims brutally attacked for their Bitcoin holdings. On Nov. 8, 2023, Aftonbladet reported that four masked men tied up a Swedish couple, assaulting them with knives. One victim had to be airlifted by helicopter to the nearest hospital.
According to prominent Swedish Bitcoiner Eric Wall, a recurring pattern in these cases is that “the victims had livestreamed a podcast about Bitcoin/crypto days before their assault or mentioned Bitcoin in a public context.”
While that’s poor operational security for any Bitcoiner, Wall also pointed to the Swedish financial transparency policy as a big factor, as criminals could check their total wealth and retrieve their addresses through the governmental open data.
Eric Wall linked the attacks to Sweden’s total financial transparency policy. Source: Eric Wall
While overall numbers of physical attacks are relatively low, the crypto community fears these attacks may increase as the number of crypto millionaires surges due to Bitcoin’s surging price.
Wall told Magazine in 2022 that he’d moved out of Sweden to Portugal, fearing for his safety after a number of attacks on crypto holders connected to the “pretty insane transparency” laws.
“Everything you’re paying in capital gains is publicly announced,” he said.
“It’s very easy to pick out targets in Sweden, so I would say that currently, I’m probably the most high profile cryptocurrency person in Sweden. And the second-most high profile person recently was attacked in his house. There were people who broke into his apartment, brutalized him and his girlfriend, and forced him to give away his crypto to them.”
Norwegian crypto holders are “vulnerable to theft”
According to the Skatteetaten, the Norwegian tax office, at least 48,000 Norwegians have declared that they own cryptocurrencies. The public online governmental portal, called the Skattelister, is accessible by anybody over 16 years old.
As Bitcoin has surpassed $100,000 into new all-time highs, local media has been publishing lists of the nation’s biggest crypto holders. Potentially a candidate for such a list, prominent Norwegian pseudonymous Bitcoin community advocate Hodlonaut condemned this practice on X:
Hodlonaut says the state is criminal for publishing all taxpayer data. Source: Hodlonaut
Norwegian Hashlabs Mining co-founder Jaran Mellerud told Cointelegraph that “criminals are likely happy to get information served to them by the newspapers, who create their own filtered list of the richest crypto holders.”
“If you own crypto, you are not safe if everyone can read in the newspaper that you own a vast amount.”
Criminals can now cross-check the data with other governmental public records and pinpoint addresses. Thanks to the total transparency from the Skattelister, “crypto hodlers are particularly vulnerable to theft,” said Mellerud.
Crypto user MisterFish responds to Bitcoin cryptographer Adam Back to explain the risks of total financial transparency. Source: MisterFish
While the information is already public, Mellrud criticized the local media for the irresponsible practice of publicizing the list. “Newspapers are going way over their line in their desperate search for clicks” as they “feast on this material” for at least two weeks after the governmental publications.
“If I were on that top 10 list, I would definitely consider leaving for a safer location.”
Scandinavian financial openness is here to stay
In the Scandinavian region, neighboring countries also place a cultural emphasis on openness and equality through financial transparency, with similar but more limited versions than the Norwegian Skattelister.
Norway publicly discloses the total income, net wealth and taxes paid of all taxpayers, with data readily accessible online. Sweden and Finland publish narrower income data focused on the latest capital gains tax, with Finland focusing primarily on high earners. Unlike Norway, both countries restrict access to wealth information, though the press often compiles and reports lists of top earners.
The privacy concerns and risks have prompted some citizens, like Finnish digital nomad and CEO of Sovereign Landing Jaakko Multanen, to leave the country. Despite not being wealthy enough to be included in the Finnish version of Norway’s Skattelister, he said the issue was enough to make “returning not even a consideration,” as shared on X.
Jaakko Multanen claims he won’t return to Finland if the list continues to be active. Source: Jaakko Multanen
Mellerud argues that the state should not publish anyone’s wealth and income, whether they are crypto hodlers or not.
However, Norway’s Skattelister system, which publicly discloses individuals’ tax information, has existed since 1814. The cultural emphasis on transparency is entrenched in Norwegian culture, but Mellerud believes “most don’t understand the dangers and other privacy implications of the Skattelister.”
There are no local political discussions about removing the Skattelister. “It is such an integrated part of our system that I think it will never go away,” said Mellerud.
Mellerud believes that the Skattelister system has effectively curbed corruption and ensured tax compliance. However, he noted that its original purpose was facilitated by a time when the internet did not exist, making the information harder to access.
“Currently, with the internet and social media, these lists are spreading so fast, and filtering is very easy, so it becomes a big infringement on privacy.”
The tax records were first published online in 2001. Anybody can access this information, and media outlets can use this data as it is public.
The first version of the Skattelister from 2001. Source: Web.archive.org
Skattelister’s “tax porn” harms lower earners
The threat to crypto holders from the Skattelister is not the only negative consequence of financial transparency.
In April 2020, economist and research associate of the University of California Ricardo Perez-Truglia conducted the study “The Effects of Income Transparency on Well-Being: Evidence from a Natural Experiment,” which analyzed the consequences of the policy.
Intended to foster transparency and protect the less fortunate from wealth disparity, a game of income comparisons emerged, which negatively affected the well-being and status of poorer Norwegians, simultaneously boosting the self-esteem of the rich.
“Income transparency had a negative effect on the well-being of individuals with lower incomes.”
The study concluded that “the higher transparency increased the gap in happiness between richer and poorer individuals by 29 percent, and it increased the life satisfaction gap by 21 percent.”
When the list was set online, every Norwegian was one click away from finding everyone else’s income in the country. While the legitimate goals of uncovering corruption or tax evasion remain, it also turned into a website to snoop on friends, relatives and social contacts.
Screenshot of a smartphone application from 2009 showing an income leaderboard. Source: Dagbladet
With the available data, users could create leaderboards showing the highest and lowest earners among their Facebook friends or maps showing the incomes of everyone living around a specific location.
“During the busiest week of the year, these websites were more popular than YouTube [...] This behavior became so pervasive that the Norwegian media dubbed it ‘tax porn,’” noted the study.
To combat the practice, since 2014, Norway has made searches of the tax records non-anonymous, which seems to have successfully leveraged social norms to discourage unintended uses of the data, such as snooping on friends.
The risk concerns over crypto holders are a new phenomenon that the Skattelister couldn’t anticipate when it was established centuries ago. The breach of an individual’s financial privacy is an ongoing national debate; however, the risks involved for crypto holders are all too apparent. Until they are addressed, crypto holders may want to follow some security tips to protect their crypto.
Dr. Anon, a Cointelegraph staff member with expertise in security matters, suggested crypto holders avoid boasting about their wealth, as these attacks are frequently “your money or your life.” In the case of Norway, it is not possible to keep wealth a secret, so he advised creating a “decoy crypto wallet with a small portion of funds” so if a “robbery, kidnapping, etc., were to occur, simply hand it over and alert authorities afterward. It’s not worth the risk of getting tortured or killed for refusing to pay.”
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