Most people never think about what happens to their money once it’s deposited in a bank, until something goes wrong.
When you place your money with a financial institution, you take on counterparty risk. The possibility that the institution holding your funds fails to meet its obligations, meaning your money may not be available when you need it.
This risk doesn’t exist in the same way with digital assets when you hold your own keys. Even if urble or Brick Towers, the company building urble no longer existed, your funds would remain available to you, because you’re in control.
Let’s take a closer look at how this works in banks versus urble.
How Traditional Banks Handle Your Money: Services and Structure
Traditional banks offer a range of regulated services for individuals and families:
- Current accounts for receiving salaries, making transfers, and paying bills
- Debit and credit cards for everyday spending with cashback or loyalty rewards.
- Savings accounts for earning modest interest on idle funds.
- Loans, mortgages, and investment accounts for financing major goals, building wealth, and planning for the future.
These services are bundled under strict regulation to protect consumers. But your deposits are also actively used in the bank’s business model.
The Illusion of Security: Guarantees and Safeguards
Banks operate under legal protection mechanisms designed to manage, not eliminate, risk:
- Deposit insurance schemes protect up to 100,000 CHF/EUR per institution (Switzerland/EU).
- Custody regulations prevent banks from claiming ownership of securities.
- Credit ratings indicate a bank’s solvency and risk profile.
These are valuable protections, but they rely on external entities: regulators, rating agencies, and the banks themselves.
Hidden Dependencies: The Real Counterparty Risk in Banking
Even with safeguards, traditional banking comes with structural risks:
- Limited transparency: You rarely know or understand how your deposits are used.
- Low returns: Interest rates are constrained by operational and regulatory costs.
- Reliance on solvency: You depend on the bank’s financial health and oversight quality.
- Restricted access: Funds are mainly available only during operating hours.
- Control risk: Accounts can be frozen or transactions blocked.
When Banks Fail: What Happens to Your Deposits
If a bank or a financial institution holding your funds goes bankrupt:
- Deposits up to the guarantee limit are reimbursed through insurance schemes.
- Amounts above that limit depend on remaining assets.
- Until resolution, your money remains in the institution’s control – not yours.
In such a situation, your money is stuck until the operational bankruptcy proceedings are concluded. This means payments freeze and your assets may be paid out fully or partially within months or year(s) of waiting.
How urble Is Different: No Counterparty, Full Control
Your Money, Your Control
In traditional banking, when you deposit $100, the bank may keep $10 and lend out $90, a system known as fractional reserve banking. That means if everyone demands their money at once, the full amount simply isn’t there.
With urble, your $100 stays your $100. Nothing is lent out, and no institution repurposes your funds. What you see in your urble app is exactly what exists, verifiable on the blockchain.
This creates true transparency and ownership, backed not by government guarantees, but by cryptography (the maths behind blockchain technology) and self-custody.
The Security Model: Trust the Math, Not the Institution
urble’s security doesn’t rely on a central bank, insurance fund, or deposit guarantee. Instead, it’s based on the mathematical certainty of blockchain technology:
- You hold the private keys to your funds.
- Transactions are secured cryptographically and recorded on-chain.
- Even if urble or Brick Towers ceased operations, your assets remain safe and accessible through any compatible wallet.
In short, urble removes counterparty risk – because there’s no counterparty between you and your money.
What Happens If Brick Towers Shuts Down
In the unlikely event that Brick Towers, the company building urble, were to close:
- You would still hold and control your assets, since Brick Towers never has access to your private keys or seed phrase.
- You could export your wallet to another provider at any time. urble will publish detailed guidance to help users migrate safely.
- Personal data stored by Brick Towers might be lost, but your funds would remain secure and unaffected on-chain.
This is what self-custody truly means, your ownership doesn’t depend on a company’s solvency or existence.
The Real Trade-Off: Responsibility Over Reliance
With traditional banks, your deposits are legally protected up to a limit (e.g. 100,000 CHF/EUR). Yet the bank ultimately controls your access until it returns the funds. Your risk lies in the institution’s financial health.
With urble, the model is reversed: you control your assets directly. The risk shifts from institutional solvency to personal responsibility – securely storing your keys and managing your access.
Understanding this difference is key to navigating the future of finance. urble empowers you to decide how and where to hold your wealth, combining simplicity, transparency, and full ownership.
