After the hype, the crash - the end of a German crypto hope

Four weeks ago it was said that there was a takeover bid for the insolvent fintech Nuri. Insolvency administrator Jesko Stark from the Berlin law firm GT Restructuring announced in an official statement that a potential buyer is interested in the digital platform of the start-up and in the more than 200,000 customers. Accordingly, the talks would be continued in greater depth.

Apparently no agreement was reached. The last remaining investors "withdrew their offers due to the deteriorated market situation," the insolvency administrator wrote in a statement. “The debtor's business operations would have needed additional fresh capital of around ten million euros to become profitable. And this investment would also have been associated with risks due to the current market development.”

Therefore, according to attorney Stark, there is only this consequence: "Business operations will be completed in the coming weeks, the existing accounts for around 200,000 customers will be terminated."

In an open letter, CEO Kristina Walcker-Mayer said on her company's website: "Unfortunately, we could not find any investors to continue our mission." She and her team worked with the insolvency administrator on a restructuring concept for three months, but to no avail .

Now she sees herself forced to lay off the last 100 employees and close the Nuri chapter. "We have now asked our customers to withdraw their funds no later than December 18, 2022 to allow the deal to be terminated and liquidated."

All assets in customers' Nuri accounts are safe and unaffected by the crypto fintech's bankruptcy, she adds. According to the insolvency administrator, Nuri has entered into an agreement with the Berlin start-up Vivid so that customers can continue their financial transactions and crypto trading. Nuri customers would thus be able to apply for a new account with the crypto and banking app Vivid and then easily transfer their assets.

Changeable times lie behind Walcker-Mayer: "Over the years, the company has gone through several transformations and repositionings, ups and downs," she writes herself. "Our plans were ambitious, but we wanted to implement them with full force."

Founded in 2015 under the name Bitwala, the fintech offered an app for trading cryptocurrencies. In addition, users received an account with a bank card that could be used to pay in shops, for example.

The long-standing hype surrounding cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum attracted a lot of attention at Nuri. With Kristina Walcker-Mayer, the crypto bank has had a distinguished fintech expert at the helm for almost two years - the face of the company.

In June 2022, Nuri starts to slide badly. "This year, the challenges have become insurmountable due to the difficult economic and political environment of the past few months," writes Walcker-Mayer. With the beginning of the Ukraine war, the stock markets worldwide had slipped deep into the red.

Tech stocks in particular were affected. A little later, investors also lost confidence in cryptocurrencies. Nuri is the first German fintech to feel the full impact of this crypto crash.

As a result, the company had to lay off 45 of its 200 employees. When the US crypto provider Celsius Networks, the central partner of Nuri's so-called "Bitcoin earnings account", had to file for bankruptcy, Nuri took the same step a little later.

The fintech CEO ends her letter by thanking customers, shareholders and her employees. And she breaks a lance for the crypto business in general. Because even if Nuri failed with the goal of making cryptocurrencies accessible and usable for everyone, she still believes in the topic.

"We look forward to all the courageous founders out there who are persistently working on a new, fair, diverse, integrative and disruptive financial system."

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