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Bitwala (formerly known as Nuri) is a blockchain banking service, headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Bitwala's concept first emerged in October 2015. Bitwala's concept first emerged in October 2015 when its founders launched operations for a global blockchain-based payment service provider.
Today, the Bitwala app is available across Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland → Encompassing nearly the entire European Economic Area, providing a state of the art self-custody Bitcoin & Ethereum wallet and an in-app native experience for buying/selling Bitcoin and Ethereum through personal, dedicated virtual IBAN accounts where users can deposit/withdraw Euros at any time.
With c.a. 200,000 KYC’d users, Nuri was a well-known and widely used crypto banking application, in Germany and Europe generally. After years of operations (initially as Bitwala and then as Nuri), the company returned all customer funds and ceased operations. Despite the looming bear market and an economic downturn, Dennis Daiber and Jan Goslicki – who were intimately involved with/ founded Bitwala 1.0’s journey into Nuri and the Nuri saga from start to finish – decided that it was too soon to call it quits. Read more about this on their blog, straight from the founders.
Re-igniting a brand is by no means an easy feat. Bitwala is now on a mission to bring its most loved and used features back – Simple self-custody, trading, and card issuing, at a time when European regulations are stricter than they have ever been. The current state of crypto regulations in Europe is akin to E-Money legislation where regulators are taking consumer protection more seriously than ever and enforcing firms that deal with virtual assets to have a strict set of guidelines, protections, and internal policies to manage the risks associated with running a virtual asset business, which effectively makes the task of being a VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider, i.e. one who provides Virtual Asset Services..) nearly as challenging as running a traditional financial institution. Dennis and Jan being veterans in the industry were intimately familiar with every existing ‘Banking as a Service’, ‘Crypto as a Service’, and other funny ‘aaS’ acronyms in the European landscape. As they mention in their blog, they were focused on doubling down on building a crypto neo-bank that people actually loved and wanted. To this end, Striga solved one of Bitwala’s pain points by providing compliant digital assets and banking infrastructure out of the box, without the need for Bitwala to handle any regulatory burden. Striga was the first company licensed under the new Estonian regime which cut down the number of VASPs in the country from several hundred to ~79 at the time of this writing, by raising the bar to run a compliant virtual asset business (A “mini-MiCA-like regime). This enabled Striga to build strong partnerships with issuing banks and financial institutions in a manner where a single set of APIs provides access to user onboarding, crypto custody, trading, IBAN issuing, and Visa card issuing, with a single contract and a fully free/transparent product + pricing.
As Dennis and Jan transitioned the Nuri brand & user base into Bitwala, they fondly announce in their blog, the story of their come back in 2023. “It took us a little longer than anticipated to get everything set up because as we are operating from Germany, there was a lot of a little bit of trickery here and there in the legal setup. So Europe is going live today and then Germany before the end of the year.”Bitwala CEO Dennis Daiber said to Decrypt. Today, Bitwala is live and operational all across the European Economic Area with Version 0 of the Bitwala app, minus Germany, whilst working closely with Striga to ensure compliance with all German regulations, prior to launching in their largest market. Bitwala’s mission is to create a safe, secure (Bitwala features a well-designed self-custody wallet at the core of the app) and simple experience to explore, buy, and sell crypto easily (The app is under active development with a ton of features coming up that helps users self-custody and manage their Bitcoin/ETH easily). “Using crypto has been always the core business of Bitwala,” says Jan Goslicki, Bitwala’s CXO.
Today, the Bitwala app (Google Play here, iOS here) is available across Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland → Encompassing nearly the entire European Economic Area, providing a state of the art self-custody Bitcoin & Ethereum wallet and an in-app native experience for buying/selling Bitcoin and Ethereum through personal, dedicated virtual IBAN accounts where users can deposit/withdraw Euros at any time. The app is gearing up for a launch that will additionally enable users to apply for Visa debit cards that enable users to link and spend from any currency in their Bitwala account, instantly. Lastly, from the man himself – “Thanks to the exceptional guidance and patience displayed by the Striga team, Bitwala 2.0 has returned to the market, ready to re-onboard all the users who have missed the simplicity of trading Bitcoin.” – Dennis Daiber, CEO of Bitwala Curious to see how compliant onboarding, on/off ramps, custody, trading, banking, and/or card issuing infrastructure can be embedded into your application? Try it yourself here.
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