In this episode of Digital Gold, JP talks with Zachary Townsend, Co-founder and CEO of Meanwhile, the first fully Bitcoin-denominated life insurance company. Zachary explains how Meanwhile operates entirely on a Bitcoin standard, from premiums and payouts to audits and financials, offering whole life policies that protect and grow Bitcoin holdings for decades while providing tax advantages, estate planning benefits, and BTC-backed borrowing without liquidation risk. They discuss how the company earns safe yield through over-collateralized institutional lending, the importance of trust and transparency in the Bitcoin economy, Zachary’s path from Stripe and Y Combinator to launching in Bermuda, and the vision to serve a billion people as Bitcoin adoption accelerates worldwide.
This episode follows JP’s conversation with Zachary Townsend, CEO of Meanwhile, covering how he built the first fully Bitcoin-denominated life insurance company and its role in the emerging Bitcoin economy.
[00:00:00] Introduction. JP welcomes Zachary and the topic of Bitcoin life insurance.
[00:01:00] Why Bitcoin + Life Insurance. Starting from the belief in a global Bitcoin economy.
[00:03:00] Whole Life as the Original HODL. Long-term wealth transfer in Bitcoin.
[00:04:00] Running on a Bitcoin Standard. All operations in BTC.
[00:05:00] Zachary’s Background. From fintech and government to Stripe and Y Combinator.
[00:08:00] Serving Global Markets. Bermuda licensing and expansion plans.
[00:12:00] How the Product Works. Whole life policies, tax benefits, BTC-backed loans.
[00:15:00] Where the Yield Comes From. Over-collateralized Bitcoin lending.
[00:20:00] Challenges and Opportunities. Bitcoin hurdle rate and simplicity.
[00:24:00] Future Products. Annuities, investment contracts, reinsurance.
[00:28:00] Policy Limits and Transparency. BTC caps and public audits.
[00:30:00] Building Trust. Overcoming skepticism and engaging clients.
[00:33:00] Advice for Entrepreneurs. Going slower to build right.
[00:35:00] Roadmap to a Billion Users. Expanding to smaller policies worldwide.
[00:39:00] Managing Premium Payments. Avoiding being short Bitcoin.
[00:41:00] How to Get Involved. Website sign-up and miner outreach.
[00:43:00] Closing. Final thoughts and invitation to connect.
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@ztownsend
@meanwhilelife
jP: [00:00:00] Welcome back to season two of the Digital Gold Podcast. Today we're joined by Zachary Townsend, co-founder and CEO of meanwhile, a life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Zach is pioneering a new approach to long-term financial protection by rethinking insurance from first principles.
In this episode, we dive into how he's making life insurance work for Bitcoin holders and why it matters for the future of digital wealth. Zach, welcome to the show.
Zachary: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
jP: Of course. So, what made you go into one of the oldest businesses in the world? Life insurance, and then why did you think Bitcoin's the perfect fit for this?
Yeah, it's interesting. It actually in some ways came about the other way, which is, my co-founder and I, and now almost everyone at the company, we believe there's gonna be a Bitcoin economy. If Bitcoin is money and as we believe, and it's, you know, the hardest, money in the world and. It's going to have an entire [00:01:00] economy. And that was our mental model when we started the business. This is like late 2021, early 2022. So we're like, okay, I don't know if it'll be the world's biggest economy, but let's say it's like a top 10 economy and it's, weird in some ways, right? It's probably, it's gonna be global, it's gonna be decentralized, it's outside of the control of any government.
But like, if we think of it as an economy, it's gonna have the same. Financial institutions and markets that exist in every economy in the world, right? So there's gonna be exchanges and there's gonna be banks, and there's gonna be payments companies, and there's gonna be asset managers. And my co-founder and I had both thought a lot about life insurance, , or long-term insurance as a sort of savings. People might think, not think of it that way, but basically these are companies that help people save for the long term. They do retirement savings and annuities, or they even do short term savings and things called like insurance bonds or guaranteed investment contracts.
And then they help people save intergenerationally [00:02:00] through, permanent life insurance in particular. So we just had the idea, oh, okay, as there is a life insurance company for every developed economy, there should be a life insurance company for the Bitcoin economy. And honestly, we didn't know what that meant really. But we started the business and it's been super successful and we've learned a lot about it. So when you were defining what that meant, what are some of the key things that. Helped you answer that question. And for listeners, what does it mean to have like a first principle approach to redesigning insurance when you have a scarce asset like bitcoin?
Zachary: We, fundamentally, what is fascinating to us actually is like permanent life insurance at least, and permanent life insurance means it lasts your whole life. So their life insurance often is split between term life, which lasts a certain term and a whole life or permanent life, which last the entire until you die. One thing that [00:03:00] we found fascinating is like, whole life is like the original hoddle. It's the original like saving for your kids and intergenerational wealth, and retiring your bloodline. So we, pretty early understood that okay, we believe Bitcoin is going to be the best durable store of value in the world.
Maybe not by the way, day to day or week to week, but when you think like decade to decade. And that is at the heart of what we do because that is what life insurance companies do, is they make these really long time promises. It's probably not something that lots of your listeners have thought about but basically the point of life insurance is to. Yeah, to save for your kids, or your nieces or nephews or your wife or whatever. And then it's also the case that. Basically, because we as like society or governments or whatever, have decided that we don't want orphans and widows to starve. There are [00:04:00] incentives to buy insurance and those incentives are expressed as, tax privileges.
So, life insurance is also a tool to do tax and estate planning. So we sort of brought all those things together. Well, to be honest, we didn't actually, when we started the business, we didn't like know all these things. What we sort of knew is like we thought Bitcoin was gonna be a great store of value forever. Its purchasing power is gonna go up and people should, , protect their families and save inside Bitcoin and the way we do that,
Zachary: I think is somewhat special. So we have a regulated licensed life insurance company in Bermuda and. Basically that company truly is on the Bitcoin standard. For that company one, Bitcoin is one Bitcoin and everything it does is in Bitcoin. People pay their premiums in Bitcoin. We pay claims like benefits out in Bitcoin. And then we do everything in between. In Bitcoin, we do our audited financials. In Bitcoin, we do our regulatory filings. In Bitcoin, we do [00:05:00] our, like all the math that makes an insurance company go is entirely in Bitcoin. On the audited financials. I think we're the only company in the world who has externally audited financials and they're stated in Bitcoin; they're not converted to dollars. Like there's a B in the corner and the whole thing's down to the Satoshi’s. And to us, this was obvious from the very beginning, okay, if we're gonna run this company, let's run it as a Bitcoin company. So that's how we actually do it. And then the why is, helping people plan, save, tax optimize with their bitcoin.
jP: So, Zach, before we jump into the products more and kind of what you're offering and how the mechanics work, how did you get to developing this company? What were you doing before and when did you become a bitcoin?
Zachary: Yeah, so I'm sort of a FinTech guy by background. I started my career. Actually doing, consulting in the civic sector like governments. And I did a lot of work on financial inclusion and [00:06:00] financial empowerment. And I ended up as the head of innovation of Newark, New Jersey, when Cory Booker, now senator was mayor. And I got really interested in this question of why do people in West Newark not have bank accounts? Why do they do like check cashing? So I guess I come from an ancient Bitcoin strain, which is like profoundly interested in like extending financial services, to low-income people.
And when Corey ran for Senate, I was like, I don't. Care about the Senate. So I coal applied to the best FinTech company I could find on Hacker News. And I was the 37th employee at Stripe. And then in the worst financial decision in my life, best life decision, I got into Y Combinator and I built a different company called Standard Treasury. And we built like. Technical integrations between FinTech companies and [00:07:00] between, banks. We ended up selling that business to SVB to Silicon Valley Bank. But I actually got my first Bitcoin this is gonna sound maybe like a special story, but it is completely a common story, which is our Coinbase was really struggling. This is like 2015 with payments and banking and know your customer stuff. There was like a, they were worried about getting de banked and they offered to acquire our company to have the, like eight of us work on financial services. Another time I could have made a boatload of money but didn't.
But I received my first Bitcoin from Brian Armstrong showing me how Coinbase work, and again, this was like his gimmick. He would like get people to sign up by like sending them a Bitcoin, which at the time I don't know, was worth a hundred dollars or something. So that, was sort of when I got interested in Bitcoin and that stuck joining Coinbase didn't stick, and I sort of like dollar cost average into Bitcoin over time.
I thought a lot about financial [00:08:00] services and yeah. And then we started this business, as I said, in late 2021, with this conception of there's going to be a Bitcoin economy, and we are incredibly motivated by this idea that if you are a middle-class person in Argentina or Nigeria or Turkey or India or Indonesia. You often don't save for the long term. You don't buy life insurance for your kids. You don't plan for your retirement. And one of the reasons you don't do that is because you are gonna live longer than the Argentinian peso, just historically. And by the way, this is true somewhat in the United States, like the dollar will be here.
But I think sometimes I have an, 7-year-old, he was born in 2018. If I bought a million dollars of life insurance coverage in 2018, I've seen the purchasing power of that policy go down 25%. So, we sort of came to this business with this ambition to serve, to really expand [00:09:00] the, like long-term savings market.
So my like, you know. Sort of bs, catch phrase that I use with venture capitalists is like, our ambition is to serve a billion people and we wanna reach them using Bitcoin, the greatest like digital store of value in the world. And we wanna serve them profitably with like AI and automation. And that, has been a through line of my whole career around financial inclusion and technology but sort of culminating in the hardest money there is.
jP: and I love that 'cause you saw a problem on the streets effectively of like, why can't these normal people get bank accounts? Right? They should be, they're in the best American Dream living. In America where we should all have access to these financial tools. But to your point, there's tons of barriers that might be preventing people from getting that. And you are expanding. You're based in Bermuda for where you guys are licensed and regulated, and then these products are [00:10:00] available to anywhere in basically in the world except for sanctioned countries effectively.
Zachary: Yes, we are able to operate anywhere in the world, I would say except for sanctioned countries. We have to be able to underwrite you. We are still like an insurance company who's taking on mortality rate. Uh. That is, people who are sick and about to die wanna buy life insurance. So, we have to make sure you're not sick and you, would prefer not to die, which is most people. So, there is a practical reality that we're primarily serving Canadians and Americans and Brits right now. But you should still come to our website and sign up because that drives a wait list. And that wait list is sort of how we decide to which countries we expand to.
jP: And so do you guys, when you're reviewing the tax policy, is that on a perks country basis that you have to provide guidance or how do you take into all these different tax codes when you're on a Bitcoin standard?
Zachary: what a great opportunity to say that I'm not your tax advisor and, you should consult your local accountants and lawyers. What I'll say is the [00:11:00] rules tend to be pretty. Similar across jurisdiction I don't know the absolute nuance of the Australian tax code. But I would say that the world has sort of gravitated towards certain product designs.
So our current product, as I said, is its whole life. So it lasts your whole life. And because you will eventually die, hopefully many, many, many long years from now, there will eventually be a payout. And then our product really. It's like an insurance product from the 1830s. Basically you pay us, a certain amount and you can either do that as a lump sum in the beginning or as a 10 pay.
And you might be like, why would I choose like one versus the other? And that is the answer to your question. It is about, the particular tax codes of individual countries. So, in the United States, for example, if you want to get. All of the best tax [00:12:00] benefits in particular, if you want, well, I'll tell you what those benefits are, but if you want all those benefits, you need to have the temp pay.
And then sometimes if you're in other countries, like it just doesn't matter and you're just like, oh, I'll send you I'll pay now. But the fundamental product is something, I'll use the American example of the Tempe. So you pay. Let's say, I'm gonna use what, maybe big numbers to some people, small numbers to other people. But you might pay like one Bitcoin a year for 10 years. So you've paid us 10 Bitcoin and then we promise a fixed guaranteed amount. That's a bigger number than that, like 13, 14, 15, 16. So it depends, on your age and your health and stuff. And on some level that's the whole thing. Like you give us 10.
Or you pay 10 and whenever you die, we pay you 15. that, that's like the policy, what's cool about that one is you get hit by a bus tomorrow and you've only paid, one premium. You know you're getting 15. Prefer not to get by a bus. The second is we're churning [00:13:00] 10 into 15 we should talk about how we do that. But basically, we get like relatively low yields on Bitcoin. And even if you could do exactly what we do, which is get two to 3% yields on Bitcoin, which you probably can't 'cause we do like very comp, not complicated, but we do institutional stuff. And in some there's a lot of expertise there.
But even if you could, you would owe taxes every year. You would owe interest income tax. So inside a policy, it's like a 401k or an IRA or something like its compounding tax free. So we can get further than you could even if you were investing this Bitcoin yourself. The third thing is it goes to your kids, income tax free or your benef again, your wife, your beneficiaries or whatever. And the last benefit, which is why it's a campaign, is you can borrow Bitcoin back out of the policy. Over time, and that is new tax basis Bitcoin in your lifetime. So if you believe that Bitcoin is going to be worth much [00:14:00] more in dollar terms in 10 years, or 15 years, or 20 years, this gives you optional liquidity.
And that's liquidity without any margin calling. That's liquidity without, the possible being. Be blown out. 'cause basically you're borrowing against like amount we owe your beneficiaries. So, you know you put in 10, in 15 years, you borrow out two and then your kids, they get 13 instead of 15.
Right. but that is like fresh Bitcoin for you. So we have people who have. Five Bitcoin, who sums in a hardware wallet, sums in a multiset, and then like they add us, we have people who have like 5,000 Bitcoin and then they like buy a max policy. And different people are optimizing around, their specific situation and their taxes and their estate planning and you know, whatever their, what the liquidity. But that is what the policy is whole life. Single pay or temp pay. And you get these cool benefits.
jP: a galaxy or an ave because you [00:15:00] don't have that liquidation risk. 'cause everything's Bitcoin denominated. Let's jump into where's the yield? How do you guys turn 10 Bitcoin to 15 Bitcoin over someone's life? And I wanna hear more about that. I.
Zachary: yeah. I mean, fundamentally what we do is we have something that almost. Other people have in Bitcoin, but they don't tend to use, which is we have duration. That is when you entrust us with your Bitcoin, you're entrusting it to us for a really long time. And I should say 'cause that is scary that there, there's a lot of stuff we haven't like. We have a regulator and we have an independent, board in Bermuda, and there's a Chief Risk Officer and enterprise risk management framework. There's this external audit, there's tons and tons and tons of people who are checking what we're saying and doing. So unlike I think Block Fi or Celsius or vo these people have blown up.
I spend a lot of my day on risk and compliance, and there's a lot of people who are sort of checking on this. Fundamentally what we do is we lend to institutional [00:16:00] counterparties, Bitcoin, and we do that on an over collateralized basis. And, we actually do that for two reasons, that it's over collateralized or collateralized or over collateralized. One reason is we just think that's the right way to do it in like Safeway. The other reason actually is when you run an insurance company as I said, you have to like, you do all this math and you have to do all these solvency calculations and we have to post our own Bitcoin. And every type of investment you have comes with like a cost, like a capital charge.
And the other than you asked treasury bonds, which we can't buy 'cause they're not nominated in Bitcoin, the. The safest considered asset is assets that we can classify as collateral loans, and that is the collateral is worth as much as or more than the lens loans we do. So [00:17:00] fundamentally what we do is we say, Hey, we can lend to you for a year or two years when no one else would. I mean. These institutions can borrow Bitcoin. They do rope often, borrow Bitcoin like overnight or whatever, we can offer is that term length. So, you want to borrow Bitcoin for a year. You want to borrow Bitcoin for two years, we'll lend it to you, but we want. A hundred-page credit agreement. We want seniority, we want collateral, we want covenants, we want information rights. So we were talking before, like we've lent to a couple miners and like their theory is, oh, I have Bitcoin cash flows. Like in the end, that's what they, like, I, yes, I transform electricity, which I pay for dollars, but fundamentally, like my cash flows are in Bitcoin. So we'll lend Bitcoin to them.
They'll presumably sell the Bitcoin or like transform the Bitcoin into mining rigs or whatever, [00:18:00] electricity. And then it's like a bond or something. Like we've lent them a hundred Bitcoin, they, pay us. Five Bitcoin a month for I can't do the math that quick but five Bitcoin a month for two years.
That's only 60 Bitcoin. And they pay us 40 five at the end. And, you know, we've gotten in that example, which we wouldn't do two-point half percent returns, but fundamentally that's the business we're in is, building a yield curve in Bitcoin building. Debt capital markets and, but doing so entirely on a collateralized or over collateralized basis. And I should say all these numbers are low. Like we are not getting 7% returns or 10% returns or 12% returns. There isn’t safe 10% returns at Bitcoin, in my opinion. To turn 10 into 15. Our guarantees sort of look like 2% returns for our users and then we get. About 3% returns and the difference between two and three is the business of being an insurance company. That's how we make money.
jP: Zach, [00:19:00] when you're dealing with an asset like Bitcoin that just is eating the capital markets and is a black hole of capital, it seems like you're in a completely different insurance game compared to normal insurance with us denominated, debt and liabilities, but assets appreciating faster because of debasement. You're in a much harder game because you guys are all Bitcoin denominated. I mean, how often do you think about that and also like do you see other groups that are large USD insurance providers coming into this space, or is it just so unique and more complicated because of the hurdle rate that Bitcoin already has built into it?
Zachary: on the first front, look, it's harder in some ways and it's easier in others, right? In the harder it is, the Bitcoin rate of return, the Bitcoin hurdle rate, it's like all the rage right now to talk about this. Like, we've been thinking that way for three, four years. But I want to go back to the very [00:20:00] beginning and say like, we believe there's gonna be an econ. There is and will continue to be a growing economic system in Bitcoin. And if there is an economic system in Bitcoin. There's going to be capital markets in Bitcoin and there's gonna be debt capital markets in Bitcoin and there's gonna be a yield curve and there's gonna be term lending in Bitcoin. And we think that's inevitable. And we see ourselves as both the recipient of that market, but also, , one of the creators of it. So, I think it's actually, it's hard, but in some ways, it is easier, I think to just think entirely in this new currency as a currency. Now I can't entirely do that, right? I have to like pay my lawyers and, my, my external auditor took payment in dollars.
But we fundamentally think like when you're running a. A Swiss Franc insurer. You don't ask yourself every day, what's the exchange rate with the dollar? It just doesn't matter. And that's the same. And then in some ways it's easier because so much of insurance [00:21:00] is well one it's boring and it's commodity, and everyone's products look the same.
But the second thing is that, it. Yeah, I think it's based on something that doesn't really make sense, by which I mean it's like based on fiat or based on things you can invest in with fiat. And because of that, life insurance products become needlessly complicated. Like riders and like, okay, no, it's not a dollar policy. It's like index to the s and p 500. It, unless you know the s and p 500 earns too much and then it's capped, or there's principle protection, blah, blah, blah. It's like so complicated. And it's complicated because I think the core value prop is confused.
Which is why I joke that like actually by having. The hardest money in the world, we've been able to run a life insurance company like it's [00:22:00] 1830, or whatever. It's this, 18th or 19th century. Because we're able to go back to the first principles of like what is the real value prop? And the real value prop is, protecting your family, doing so in a tax efficient way. And having this simple understanding with our policy holders, which is like to use the numbers used before, like you give me 10 Bitcoin, I will promise that . Your loved ones get 15 and we all expect or not we all, but like the people who buy the product expect 15 Bitcoin to be worth a lot more.
Right. So we start with this very simple question for many of our sales conversations, which is, would you prefer your kids got one and a half million dollars or 15 Bitcoin? And look for many people in the world, the answer would be one and a half million dollars. They don't want the magic beans. But I think for people who've like. Believe and bought in. The answer is obviously 15 Bitcoin and we've built an entire company around that. I've talked for a long time on this question, but I'll answer your second question, which the second question was, [00:23:00] do I think that, big historic and combat insurers will do this? I do not think they're gonna do it alone.
I have been surprised this year is a very. Institutional year for Bitcoin, right? There's just so much institutional interest and how that's expressing itself with us is we have received a ton of inbound requests to partner together to bring Bitcoin products to market, and we are happy to do that. Like fundamentally, what we want to do is we want more people in the world to be able to save in Bitcoin, and if that means working with. An incumbent insurer in the US or Singapore or UAE or whatever and helping them do it because we are the only like insurer in insurance land that can hold Bitcoin, then we're happy to do that.
And if you had talked to me a year ago, I would've been like. One, I'm not partnering with these people. And two, they're never gonna get around to it. And now what I think is they don't have [00:24:00] the capabilities or the interest or the balance sheet to do it alone, but I think you'll see more and more bitcoin life insurance products and annuities. But that is all gonna be in partnership with us.
jP: It makes complete sense and as you keep on referring to this Bitcoin circular economy that is existing as you exceed with this, succeed with this one product. What other financial primitives or insurance products will you guys, move out to? Or is it simply, we wanna be the best at this product and we don't want to get into annuities or pensions or reinsurance?
Zachary: Oh, no, no. Basically we're interested in doing everything that an insurance company does that is genuinely long term. And by long term we are really focused on like a year or more which may not sound super long term, but our whole life product like obviously lasts 40, 50 years. We're playing next year to do a fixed deferred annuity, which is just [00:25:00] like a. A savings product. You put Bitcoin, in an account and it's like compounding, let's say 2% a year, and then you can withdraw it during your lifetime. Again, very tax advantage. We're working on a product now called a guaranteed investment contract, which again is like a certificate of deposit with an insurance company instead of a bank.
So that would be a way for users or institutional counterparties to I was gonna say, it's so funny 'okay. If banking, I'd say a civic deposit. If you're like, come from crypto land, I'd say like, you can stake your Bitcoin, by which I mean, we will invest, you can entrust us with your Bitcoin for a year and we'll go get a yield on it. The way I mentioned, yes, reinsurance. There's this whole category of stuff called, , company owned life insurance, , which isn't like the group life you might sign up for in your payroll, but it's like literally companies buy life insurance on their employees or put it in pensions or deferred compensation plans. We intend to do all of that. I think the things that it's funny come to [00:26:00] mind the fastest for people is often. Term life because it's like the most common product that'll probably be like one of the last things we do. And primarily that's for two reasons. One is. The idea of term life is it, lasts a certain term and you're very unlikely to die in the term, but if you did, it would be like terrible. So you pay a little amount and then you get a really big payout, right? So I pay, for example, maybe like a thousand dollars a year and I get, I don't know, a million or $2 million in coverage. So the reason you do that is if you're like youngish and if you get hit by a bus, that'd be really bad.
And so you buy this term life. But there's two reasons we don't like that. By the way, you should buy a term life, but we don't like it for Bitcoin. One is if you are one of the unfortunate people who dies inside the 10-year term the price fluctuations of Bitcoin are quite up and down. On that timescale and we really want to push users to [00:27:00] think, or policy holders to think in that 20, 30, 40, 50 year time span. Whereas if you bought term life, your family really could end up in the situation where you're like, oh, we happen to be where it is in the cycle where Bitcoin's worth a lot less than you paid.
Whereas I think as you go over time, we feel much better that like, okay, we're actually gonna be getting our users much more purchasing power than like when they bought the policy. And the second is the happy end of a term life policy is that you don't get a payout. Right.Most people who get term life, they live and that's good 'cause you lived the fundamental idea, right, is none of us knows when we're gonna die, but when you like have a thousand people, you can start getting some statistical regularity on. Like who's gonna die that some number of us are gonna die. So if a thousand people all put a dollar in a pot and one person's gonna die this year, then they get a thousand dollars. Right? And that sort of like makes sense. There's real protection and risk sharing. But for those 999 people in that example, they put a [00:28:00] dollar in a pot, but it could feel like they didn't get anything and they did get something.
They got the protection. But it may feel that way. And we just think that, . There's not a great history in Bitcoin or crypto of promising something and then people feeling that they didn't get anything. So we like to stick with products where, , like we're making promises and guarantees where we can like definitively show that like we are meeting these promises and guarantees and like, there's never a question ever about whether we've met a promise and a guarantee.
jP: And I guess Zach, on the promising guarantee, you're mentioning thousands of Bitcoin sometimes by customers.
Zachary: no, no. Sorry. We have a policy Max. You can't give us more than like 30 or 40 Bitcoin.
jP: Okay, so 30 or 40 Bitcoin, which is still a significant amount
Zachary: a lot. It's a lot. But yeah, we have had people ask us if they can, pay a thousand Bitcoin. The problem is if that guy dies, so We very prudently manage our, risks by having policy limits.
jP: Then my next [00:29:00] question is what type of visibility does a policy holder have into , the company and the audits?
Zachary: The audits are public, actually. So if you go to our website. Write up. It's like one of the main things on the website is, the financials. And you can see like my CEO letter. You can see the external auditor. You can like absolutely see our financials. Our current auditor financials are from last year. And you can see at the time the end of last year we had something like 250 Bitcoin and assets. And we've actually more than. Doubled since then the next time people see that is in our 2020, five audit, which will be released in early 2026.
jP: And what is one of like the biggest questions that you get when people are trying to sign up? That's more like a hurdle for you guys as a Bitcoin insurance provider?
Zachary: Yeah. Look, I mean, fundamentally, I joke that we sort of do a lot of [00:30:00] things that are not beloved in Bitcoin land, right? Like one you send us your Bitcoin. Nobody likes doing that. Two, we manage your Bitcoin and everyone else's in a giant pile, right? So there's like a ation. The third is we lend Bitcoin to get yield. Right? So we have reasons for all of those things, right? , And fundamentally, the reason we do all these things is not just because we want to build a great company, but it's actually how we comply with all these tax rules and stuff. So like I have a lot of lawyers and like we have, tax opinions about this is in fact life insurance and it will in fact get, these tax protections so the number one question people ask us is like, why should we trust you? And then what I'd say is that, it's all these things adding up together. It's that I'm not anonymous. It's that we have [00:31:00] people, like, we just closed a policy, I think maybe yesterday that someone who first came to the website and signed up 18 months ago or like right when we started. So, we see that. Having the external audit published. Like we've raised a series A from. a $40 million Series A from Fulger, who is like a well-known, Bitcoin fund and framework, and Weis, who's like a well-known Bitcoin. Right? I come on podcasts like this and answer questions.
We talk. Every single person who comes and signs up on our website someone on my team or I. We have a Zoom call with them and we answer every question they have, right? These things add up over time to people trusting us more. But we know it's a big ask. That's why people don't do it. But we are fortunate that, again, users have trusted us with now, many hundreds of Bitcoin and, trust [00:32:00] is something you earn and one of the ways you earn it is like we just do exactly what we say we're gonna do. And that's been working out for us.
jP: And that's amazing. I mean, that's the goal of, to your point, building the Bitcoin economy. You have to sniff out, okay, what is the legitimacy of each one of these groups? And I definitely see that you guys come off. As a legitimate Bitcoin company, based on all the reasons you've already listed, when it comes to, people building in the intersection of legacy finance and the Bitcoin economy, what advice do you have to other entrepreneurs other than what you mentioned about, staying to your word and being trustworthy and being visible when it comes to building in that intersection of the old world versus the new bitcoin world?
Zachary: Well, I think the biggest difference is that in the new Bitcoin world, one, transactions being somewhat irreversible, it requires that you are more trustworthy and I think the second is [00:33:00] that there's obviously a history of frauds and Ponzi schemes, right? So I really place myself, you know, with.
As you say, like a, there's, a cohort of people who I think, who are really building the Bitcoin economy at the intersection of Bitcoin and regulated financial services. And I think sometimes you'll notice that the, like things might be a little slower. They might be a little, less flashy. They might in our case we spent a year getting. A sandbox license then another nine months until we launched then like another year until we got fully licensed. And that was really, man was that hard. but if you're gonna do something complicated and difficult, I think you have to do it the right way.
And I look at, these aren't necessarily all Bitcoin companies I look at an Anchorage or , even. I think Coinbase over and over again made the choice to, be a little [00:34:00] more buttoned up. And I think that's the right choice. But again, Anchorage becoming a, an o CCC regulated trust company, I don't know even, there are a lot of, I think, people doing the right things, but I think the right things can often be. Frustrating as an entrepreneur because it also means you go, probably go a little slower and I think , that's the right, certainly the right trade off for us. But I think actually in general, that's the right trade off when you're building an entire new economic system in an entire new currency.
jP: E Exactly. You don't wanna mess up, you don't wanna become the Mount Gox or an FTX, you want to do it right. As you're mentioning. And there's plenty of protocols and players that have done it right, that have published those, that show you the regulatory framework to work in. So I think that's great advice. And one of the questions I have. Is about you wanna serve a billion people. So what's the roadmap to get there? You mentioned people coming to websites, signing up, even if they're not in one of those countries that you currently serve. But how do you get to a billion people who meanwhile.
Zachary: Yeah, I [00:35:00] mean, fundamentally we believe this is a once in a century opportunity to build a competitive, long-term savings company because we are right at the emergence of an entire new economic system. The analogy I use is, , probably the only top 10 global life insurer. That was founded in the last 50 years is a company called Pingam, which is the life insurance company in China. And they were founded in the nineties and they like rode the wave of that country growing. And I think we want to ride the same wave of like Bitcoin penetrating the global economy. So I think there's two things or three things. One is first and foremost, what we've talked about, which is our core number one value is to meet our commitments.
To be trustworthy, to do exactly what we say we're gonna do. And by the way, that's just unusual actually. I remember when we were raising our series [00:36:00] A and we went to a bunch of VCs that I had talked to about the seed, where I'd like talked to previously, and they were just like, oh. You did exactly what you said you were gonna do. That's like really unusual. That's our number one North star of how to grow , is to, meet our commitments. The second is wic. We have a theory of, from the very, very first, memo we wrote around the company, we sort of used the analogy of Tesla.
Which is like we were gonna build a Roadster and our product right now, just to be honest, like it's a Roadster, right? It's basically for at least globally, right? High net worth or ultra and high net worth individuals, primarily for protection and tax planning but we want in time as we build more of a balance sheet, as we build more technology to systematically move down market. And that's both with, new products like we talked about, and then also in like being able to profitably serve, smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller sizes. Whatever [00:37:00] that will eventually be our current policy minimum is one Bitcoin, which is a lot of money. I hope I always get the orders of magnitude wrong. Our policy minimum is one Bitcoin total, which will look like a 10th of a Bitcoin a year. But still, that's a lot of money. Actually, we're about to, when lower that, because when we set the limit Bitcoin was at like 30,000. So obviously, dollars.
But in time, we wanna start thinking about policies in terms of. Hundreds of thousands of Satoshis maybe, which is like much smaller. And that's building up technical infrastructure. That's building up regulatory infrastructure. So that's our plan is like we, have this product, it's primarily for high-net-worth individuals. And then we sort of like systematically, like get lower and lower and like can serve people all over the world, digitally and globally. Yep. So, meet our commitments and then sort of like systematically move down market. And then the third thing I already said, which is like, ride the wave of Bitcoin ization, we don't see [00:38:00] ourselves as actually being in the business of convincing people to buy Bitcoin.
We see that as like, that's the thing that happens in the world and that is the thing that's gonna increasingly happen in the world. And yes, maybe that you can have disagreements about whether the ETFs are good, but I think that BlackRock saying that 1% of your retirement savings should be in Bitcoin makes a lot of sense. And that's good in the world. And we don't think that convincing is our job. We think our job is to support and help the people who've already made the decision to partially or wholly live, their life in Bitcoin. And we think that'll be more people every year. And eventually, yes, it'll be a billion people in the world who have some, interest and exposure and investment in Bitcoin. And then they're gonna want, a partner who will help them with long-term savings.
jP: I think Zach, that's like something, the Bitcoiners in the world need. So thank you so much for like developing that and bringing this to market because it is so important to think about this global reserve currency that we're [00:39:00] building and the ability to have it passed on without being taxed to a wazoo, even though that's not the normal term
Zachary: a technical term. The wa? Yeah, the wazoo. Yeah.
jP: One of the questions I had, as you were mentioning, the smaller amounts. When you have a client who, let's say something happens in their life, let's say they didn't die, but they got disabled and they can't make one of those monthly, or those annual premium payments in Bitcoin, or if the price appreciates too quickly, how do you guys work with someone on
Zachary: yeah, Look, my personal advice is never be short Bitcoin, don't buy a policy that, is bigger than your stack. , We do have some more like, I'd say like Tradify users who have water policy bigger than our stack. 'cause they're like, oh, this will force me to dollar cost average into Bitcoin. Again, personally I wouldn't do that. So, I almost all of our users, you know, maybe they have. A Bitcoin, they buy a policy or they have five Bitcoin and they buy a two Bitcoin policy, or they have 500 [00:40:00] Bitcoin if you're so fortunate and they buy a 30 Bitcoin policy. But we don't really suggest that you go beyond your current stack, even if you're only paying us, once a year.
And then actually a lot of people prepay their premiums. They just don't wanna think about it. So they, even though, that. We sort of keep it in for you and then like we pay ourselves over time. But either way, again, just don't recommend shorting Bitcoin.
jP: Yeah, it's really hard to beat that asset. And That's was, makes sense and was one of the, I guess, the questions that was in my mind. And, what other information should the viewers know about the product or how to get involved?
Zachary: Well we're at, meanwhile, BM spelled has mean the word meanwhile is spelled. And. Yeah, honestly, I wanna say that if you go to the website and you start filling out the form, that is not a commitment to buy the policy. [00:41:00] That is actually a commitment to have one of us reach out to you and find time to learn more about the policy. I think there tends to be lots of individual questions, lots of individual circumstances and concerns. So that's the number one way to find out more is to go to meanwhile.bm., Sign up on the website, a any step after having a username and password. And then someone will reach out from the team and connect with you.
jP: And then do you have any resources for people to learn more about?
Zachary: Well, yeah, there is more information on the website. And then, yeah, we do have collateral and stuff that we can send people who. Who want it. And then you should listen to this whole podcast. And, actually going back to trust, one of the things is, you know, now, being on more podcasts, but also, there's a bunch of, you know, like Axios wrote an article about us and like our rounds got announced in Fortune and like we're pretty deliberate about getting pr, not, you know, a lot of PR can be [00:42:00] bs, but I think just to. Confirm that it's not just me. there's a whole team of people there's a whole team of investors. So folks can definitely learn more about us. I find that Googling meanwhile doesn't do a lot of good, but Googling meanwhile Bitcoin or meanwhile Bitcoin insurance or Bitcoin insurance, life insurance, you'll find a lot about us.
jP: Well, thank you Zach. I really appreciate you coming on and explaining the product personally for me. I think , I heard about you guys previously might have signed up on the email list and was like, oh, what? Is this? Bitcoin life insurance. I'm 28 years old, so a little bit early, but still not too early to be thinking about it and wanting to
Zachary: You definitely in a policy. Let's get you signed up.
jP: so I think I'm ready , to talk more about it and see what the
Zachary: I'd say minors are a core demographic.
jP: So if you guys are, you know, Bitcoin miners, like most people that do listen to this show, reach out to meanwhile and see how you can get connected with a policy and, yeah that's a genuine promotion. No payment for this show or for, , having you on here. Just so the listeners know.
Zachary: Yeah, thanks so much. And number one is I think [00:43:00] individual if you're in the mining business, , like you probably as an individual. And then as I mentioned, we are working on the like certificate deposit product. And actually the reason we're building that is so many people who have bitcoin treasuries, and I don't just mean like big Bitcoin treasury companies, but also like individual mining companies and stuff like that, they have just, asked us to help them get. Low steady yields on their Bitcoin. , So if either of those things are interesting, you should again, meanwhile.bm. I'll drop that.
jP: Well, thank you again for coming on, Zach, and remember to mine on.