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Bitwala

bitwala.com🇩🇪 GermanyDACH
bitwala.com
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About

Banking and Bitcoin coexisting in the same account felt like a contradiction in terms for most of the 2010s. Banks were systematically closing accounts connected to crypto activity while the crypto industry was building parallel financial infrastructure that deliberately avoided the banking system. Bitwala was founded in Berlin in 2015 to bridge that gap — building a bank account with integrated Bitcoin functionality, letting users hold euros and Bitcoin in the same place and convert between them instantly. The product was genuinely novel: a German IBAN, a Visa debit card, and a Bitcoin wallet under one roof, with the regulatory standing of a licensed German financial institution. Bitwala rebranded to Nuri in 2021, reflecting a broader evolution from a Bitcoin-specific product toward a more comprehensive crypto banking platform. The Nuri brand subsequently entered insolvency in 2022, a casualty of the crypto market downturn and the difficult economics of building a consumer banking product. The Bitwala/Nuri story is one of the more instructive in European crypto banking — a genuinely innovative product that proved the market wanted crypto-integrated banking accounts, but that couldn't build a sustainable business model before the market turned.

Categories
Crypto & BlockchainDigital Banking
Subcategories
WalletsNeobanks
Services & products
crypto walletsdigital accountsmobile banking
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Quick facts
Founded
2015
Founders
Benjamin Jones|Johann Bornman|Jörg von Minckwitz
Employees
50-200
Users
Business model
B2C
Target customers
Consumers
Notable clients
Geographic focus
DACH
Last updated
Updated today