According to the court, the bank as an employer has every right to ask its employees not to invest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Going forward, the employer will be in a position to provide guidelines to its personnel on trading and owning crypto, even when they are off work.
BTC Is Unstable and Can Hurt the Reputation of Nordea Bank
Recently, a Copenhagen-based court ruled that crypto assets are unstable and risky. The risks involved in trading and owning the cryptocurrencies, thereby, justified the restrictions put in place.
According to a Bloomberg report, the initial lawsuit had been filed by Denmark’s Union for Financial Industry Employees. Before filing the lawsuit, the union concluded that placing a blanket ban on employee’s owning crypto would somehow interfere with the personal lives of the employees.
The Union, through its Chairman Kent Petersen, when commenting on the ban noted:
“We filed suit because of the principle that everyone obviously has a private life and the right to act as a private individual. It was important for us and our members to establish what rights managers have. In this case, it was more far-reaching than what we find to be appropriate.”
Nordea Bank has held on to the position that investing in crypto assets is likely to tarnish its reputation. For this reason, holding or buying BTC would be seen as an etiquette breach by the employees who chose to do so. The employer went as far as warning its employees that the BTC market was unregulated, and may as such be linked to illegal activity.
Blockchain Payment System and a Digital Asset Derivatives
In contradiction, the bank has in the past gone ahead to provide derivative financial tools that were all based on digital currencies. However, such assets were only recommended to a special group of its clients. In such cases, its workers, if they were interested, were allowed to invest in some of the derivatives, but they could not hold on to actual coins. The bank also recently launched we.trade, a payment system based on the blockchain platform.
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