The Last Day · Nº 02
Nuri
Formerly Bitwala · Berlin · October 2015 to 18 December 2022
Nine months later · September 2023 · Back as Bitwala
They built the first product in Germany that kept bitcoin and euros in the same account. Born as Bitwala, it died as Nuri, and nine months later it was born again as Bitwala. In between there are five decisions, and you are in the chair.
Built from the public record · Last checked 28 September 2026
You run a crypto fintech in Berlin called Bitwala. Five decisions are in front of you, and after each one you'll see what really happened.
The cards stopped one morning
Your customers spend their bitcoin with a Visa card. Behind the card sits WaveCrest, an infrastructure provider based in Gibraltar. That morning Visa ends WaveCrest's membership for repeatedly breaking its rules, and every card stops at once. Neither Visa nor WaveCrest gives you time to prepare.
What do you do?
What really happened
Bitwala chose B and signed with Solarisbank in October 2018. In November it relaunched with a product that combined bitcoin and euros in one German bank account. By early 2021 it had more than 200,000 customers in 32 countries and was described as Germany's third largest neobank.
Leave the niche, or strengthen the base?
Everyone in your niche knows your name. The first German product to hold bitcoin and euros in the same account is yours. You closed a €15 million round in winter 2020, and another €9 million came in on top in mid 2021.
What do you do?
What really happened
Bitwala chose A. In May 2021 it became Nuri, the design turned colourful, and the goal was announced as offering financial products to a broad, diverse audience. When the name changed there were no new features yet. The CEO said the new brand would be the foundation for the products to come.
The growth came too. The customer count, 250,000 at the rename, was close to 500,000 within a year. But what carried that growth was investor money. Customers doubled while the product and the revenue model stood still. How long does growth bought with money stand once the money stops?
Part of the bill landed on support. The same week as the rename, one user wrote that his support requests went unanswered and that he'd leave at the first chance. On Trustpilot, the company itself admitted in its replies that the load was slowing its answers.
In the money business, if support doesn't grow as fast as the customer count, trust starts to wear away. If you can't answer someone who trusted you with their money, you're staying silent. Stay silent and you die slowly.
Interest, but which interest?
Look at the market first. German banks pay no interest on deposits, and some charge for them. Verivox counts 149 banks and savings banks with negative rates for private customers. Even ING charges 0.5% above €100,000 on new accounts from February 2021.
Crypto turns the picture around. Celsius pays 6.2% a year on bitcoin on its own site, and BlockFi pays 5% on up to 0.5 bitcoin.
Most people, though, are heading into ETFs. Following Trade Republic, flatex and ING stop charging for ETF savings plans in spring 2021. In April 2021 almost 2.5 million ETF savings plans run in Germany, and by September the number is close to 3 million. The broad audience escapes zero interest by buying ETFs every month.
What do you do?
What really happened
Nuri chose A first. Behind the Bitcoin Ertragskonto, which promised up to 3%, was Celsius. Nuri passed customers' bitcoin to Celsius, and Celsius lent it to others for interest. In Nuri's own example the rate was 3.45%, so the customer got roughly half of what Celsius paid its own customers.
B came later. The crypto savings plan opened in August 2021, and Nuri Pots, which brought ETFs together, only arrived in 2022 as the market was turning.
While the broad audience bought ETFs every month, bitcoin interest spoke to people who already held bitcoin. Was this really what the market wanted?
On top of that, the account had no deposit protection. If Celsius failed, customers would have to claim their money from Celsius in the US.
Let's look at the revenue model
The account and the card are both free. Most of your revenue is the 1% you take on every crypto trade, so you earn when people trade. When trading slows, revenue slows, but what you pay your bank partner for each customer stays where it is. Nothing else in the product brings in regular income.
You now have close to half a million customers, and the rented banking infrastructure that was cheap when you were small is expensive at this scale. You've decided to build your own bank and the paperwork is ready. For capital and runway you need €50 million.
You go out to raise a Series C two months late, and the war in Ukraine begins. Funds that asked you in January for a more aggressive growth plan come back six weeks later asking whether you can be profitable in one year instead of four.
What do you do?
What really happened
Nuri chose A. At the end of May it parted ways with 20% of its staff and drew up a new product roadmap aimed at the mass market. The CEO wrote that it was the hardest decision in the company's history.
When was the right time to move to your own licence? With €24 million freshly raised and the market rising, or in these weeks, as the funds pull back?
Celsius stops withdrawals
You have close to 500,000 customers, and some of them have bitcoin locked at Celsius right now. At the same time, talks for a funding round are still going.
What do you do?
What really happened
Nuri chose A. Withdrawals and new investments in the interest account were paused, and it announced that all other features were working. Still, that week the headlines put two companies side by side: Nuri, the Berlin fintech, and Celsius, which had frozen withdrawals.
Neither Pavilion Capital, seen as a possible investor, nor the existing shareholders could find the money needed in the short term, and Nuri filed for insolvency. Customer money was unaffected, because it sat with Solarisbank.
The decision to close came on 18 October. In her farewell letter the CEO wrote that the insolvency of one of the company's main partners had pushed it over the edge, and everyone assumed it was Celsius.
Customers were pointed to Vivid Money, and those who moved were promised free premium membership until the end of the year. Nobody ever said how many actually moved. Customers had until 18 December 2022 to withdraw their money, and that became Nuri's last day.
The story didn't end there. In September 2023 co-founder Jan Goslicki and Nuri's former head of trading, Dennis Daiber, reopened the app with a team of nine. The name was Bitwala again, and they started out with a piece of Nuri's insolvency estate.
The new Bitwala left behind everything Nuri had added while growing. The team stripped all banking and lending code out of the app. In November it signed with Striga, an Estonian infrastructure company, and went back to buying and selling bitcoin and ether in 29 European countries. According to Goslicki, that was what customers wanted most anyway: to buy, sell and spend bitcoin.
In an interview after the relaunch, Daiber pushed back on the story everyone knew. In his view Celsius had no economic impact on Nuri. The bitcoin sat with Celsius, and Nuri carried no liability. The damage Celsius did was to the reputation.
In finance, reputation is everything. Once trust is damaged, it is very hard to put back.
So what really stopped the company? Where do you think the brake was?
fspark9 · Our view
Bitwala was born for bitcoin users, and when it was born again it went back to them. In the seven years between, it tried a broad audience, an interest product and a bank of its own. Each was a reasonable idea, and each was built on rented infrastructure and investor money.
Rented banking infrastructure gets you going fast. As customers grow, so does its cost, and every problem your partner has becomes yours too. Along the way, support has to grow as fast as the customers, because in the money business trust is also measured by how fast you answer.
Service · Product & Strategy
Your own licence: when, with which partner, on which revenue model?
The decisions on Nuri's table sit on many fintech tables today. In Product & Strategy we settle them with your team and a clear recommendation: when to move to your own licence, which bank partner to choose, and whether the revenue model can carry both.
See Product & StrategyStep nine is live.
- 01A free 30 minute call.
- 02A written proposal, with the price.