Crypto bank Nuri shuts down – here’s how to withdraw funds to Coinmotion

Crypto bank Nuri will shut down its operations at the end of 2022. Earlier filed for insolvency, Nuri, unfortunately, failed to raise new funding or find investors. Now the German crypto startup is encouraging its 500 thousand users to withdraw their funds from the platform.

Nuri (formerly known as Bitwala) is the latest victim of the bear market. Nuri is shutting down its operations and is asking its 500 thousand customers to withdraw their funds from their accounts by mid-December. This is to prepare for the business liquidation and shutdown.

Founded in 2015 under the name Bitwala, the crypto bank has faced tough economic challenges during the bear market. Nuri CEO Kristina Walcker-Mayer published a letter for their investors, in which she tells about Nuri’s unbearable problems caused by the tough economic and political environment.

Nuri couldn’t raise new funding or find an acquirer for their business. They worked long hours trying to come up with a restructuring plan and find a potential buyer to continue operations. The plan failed as they found no willing investors. 

In addition, they had trouble with one of the main business partners, which in the end, put them over the edge. 

The CEO didn’t mention who the partner was, but there’s a reason to assume she’s talking about Celsius. The company had earlier partnered with Nuri to offer Bitcoin interest accounts. When Celsius took a hit after Ethereum’s price dropped, the accounts were halted.

Nuri filed for temporary insolvency in August.

Now Nuri is asking their customers to withdraw their funds by 18.12.2022 at the latest so that the business can be terminated and liquidated. Nuri’s crypto trading services will be kept online until the end of November.

What is Nuri?

Nuri is a German crypto bank startup that was founded in 2015. It operated under the name Bitwala in the beginning. 

Nuri’s purpose was to make Bitcoin spendable. Their vision was to create a world where everyone is empowered to build their financial future. Nuri wanted to provide innovative ways to manage and grow their wealth.

Ambitious plans came to an end in 2022. In August, Nuri filed for preliminary insolvency due to weak market conditions. Now it has announced that its service will be shut down at the end of the year. Nuri recommends all users to withdraw their funds from the platform as soon as possible.

Although it is sad to witness another crypto company going out of business, Nuri is handling its final chapter with dignity by actually encouraging users to withdraw their funds and giving a fair warning beforehand. 

In traditional financing, this would be a self-evident procedure, but in crypto, this doesn’t always happen. Crypto lender Celsius, for example, went bankrupt earlier this year. And instead of warning their investors, it actually locked user funds to prevent withdrawals.

Not the first bear market victim

Nuri is not alone: several crypto companies have gone bankrupt during the 2022 downfall. The most notorious bear market victims are Celsius. Three Arrow Capital and Voyager Digital all suffered from Terra’s infamous collapse.

Celsius was a popular lending platform, which had almost 12 billion dollars in deposits still in May. After a steep decline in Ethereum’s price, users started to withdraw funds from Celsius, which the company couldn’t handle.

Celsius suspended withdrawals in June, causing a storm in social media. Later Celsius declared bankruptcy. 

Three Arrow Capital (3AC) was a 10-billion-dollar crypto hedge fund – one of the largest ones in existence. Compared to Wall Street hedge funds, 3AC was a small player, but in the crypto world, it was considered a massive investment company.

3AC was founded by school friends Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, who managed to grow it into the most important hedge fund in digital assets. The future looked bright until the young duo, in the quest for exploding growth, decided to bet on the continuous increase in crypto prices in 2022 with borrowed money. 

When the markets continued to fall, 3AC started to miss margin calls and was later forced to declare bankruptcy, as they couldn’t pay their debts.

3AC was one of the biggest clients of Voyager Digital, which also collapsed when the hedge fund went out of business.

How to withdraw funds to Coinmotion

Nuri encourages its customers to withdraw funds as soon as possible. It has prepared a list of frequently asked questions related to the shutdown.

The shutdown affects half a million Nuri users. If you have funds at Nuri’s platform and want to transfer them into a secure crypto service, you can easily withdraw the funds to Coinmotion.

Coinmotion is the first company in Europe to receive a payment institution license and is officially registered as a digital currency service provider. The license and registration for the company have been granted by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority. In order to obtain permits, the company has had to pass several safety-related audits and controls.

Coinmotion has more than eight years of experience in securely storing cryptocurrencies. We are one of the longest-running Bitcoin investment companies in the world and have developed our security practices to the highest level. The majority of customer funds are stored in so-called cold wallets, out of reach of all hackers.

Here’s how to withdraw your funds to Coinmotion:

1. Sign up to Coinmotion

Coinmotion is a security-first crypto service provider. You can open a free account here.

2. Set up your account

Setting up only takes a few minutes. 

First, select the type of account by clicking Private or Business. 

After that, enter your email address and password on the page. Read and accept the terms of use of the service and the privacy statement. Select “Next.”

The next page will ask you to confirm your email address. You will receive a code for confirmation in your email. Enter the code in the field provided for it and select “Log in.”

3. Send cryptocurrency to Coinmotion

Select Transfers from the main menu, then click the Receive tab. 

On this page, you can see all the cryptocurrency addresses you have. If you want to receive Bitcoin from Nuri, select “Bitcoin” from the dropdown menu. 

The list shows all the addresses you have created. When you click on the address, a popup window opens. You can copy the address to the clipboard there. 

Once the address is copied, paste it into the “send to” field in Nuri or your external wallet and hit send. Double-check that you are sending the right cryptocurrency!

4. Receive

Once your transaction is validated in the blockchain, your funds will arrive in your Coinmotion account. We will send you an email when the funds are received.

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