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THE Bitcoin Podcast
BITCOIN INSURANCE, WRENCH ATTACKS, KIDNAPPING & RANSOM, & INHERITANCE SECURITY | Becca Rubenfeld
01:46:30
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- [00:00]
Becca
And so ultimately we determined that the only true solution, true solution to a wrench attack is insurance. Because we've definitely had customers say that they have opted to use either multi institutional custody or a sole custodian. And they're like, look, I know there's counterparty risk. I just don't want the kidnapping risk in my home. Like, I don't want it there. And the problem with that is that it doesn't matter, right? Because if they came knowing that you have bitcoin and you're like, I have zero keys, I can do nothing. They're like, you can make a phone call though, right? You can call your custodian and be like, boys, there's a gun to my head right now. I need you to send my bitcoin right now or they're going to shoot me. And they're going to be like, oh, we have, we have procedures. And you're like, no, for real, you have my permission. They are going to shoot me. Send the bitcoin, right? They're going to send the bitcoin, right? So like the insurance needs to be there whether whomever. Like if we're talking wrench attacks, like this is, this is a case where old school insurance serves a very important purpose.
- [01:10]
Walker
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast. Bitcoin continues to create new blocks every 10 minutes and the value of one bitcoin is still one bitcoin. If you are listening to this right now, remember you are still early. Find me on noster@primal.net walker and this podcast@primal.netcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at Tipcoin Podcast. Head to the show notes for sponsor links. Head to substack.comalker America to get episodes emailed to you and head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Without further ado, let's get into this bitcoin talk.
- [02:08]
Unknown
I'm always really pleasantly surprised when stuff on Noster works like really flawlessly. Like it's just, it's just great, you know, just a bunch of open source devs hacking stuff together and like it just, it, it works like basically as well as stuff with or you know, companies with massive budgets behind them.
- [02:24]
Becca
So that's just.
- [02:25]
Unknown
I find that beautiful.
- [02:26]
Becca
What do you use as your go to? I use Primal.
- [02:30]
Unknown
I use both Primal and Damas on like a daily basis. So I'll always give a shout out to Will Kasserin because he's the creator of Domus. They were like the first client that I used back in early December 2022.
- [02:45]
Becca
Okay.
- [02:46]
Unknown
And like, the fact that they're purple, that their logo was purple, is literally the reason that I designed the oral. I didn't design, had AI design an ostrich that was purple based on a bottle. A chatgpt bot that Will wrote, which gave me a terrible joke about, you know, what do you call a nosy ostrich? A nostril. I was like, well, that'd be a cool logo for this. And here we are. So it's funny. So I, I, I, I use Primal Domus, both of them, daily. I use Zap Stream for this particular streaming, which is nice. And I've used honestly, like so many different clients now. But that's kind of the beautiful thing is like, there is always a. Or at least if there isn't, there will be a purpose built client for whatever your need is. And I think that micro app versus, like super app dynamic is actually quite interesting because you've got Musk who like, he wants the super app. We know he's going towards payments too. It's convenient, but it's also like, boy, that's a big old honey pot of information.
- [03:51]
Becca
Yeah, I gotcha.
- [03:53]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [03:54]
But okay, we are now live. We're good to go. Becca, welcome. Great to. Great to see you. I wish it was in the flesh like the last couple of times, but.
- [04:02]
Becca
This will have to do for now. Well, thanks for having me on. Yeah. I also wish it was in the flesh, but happy to be on for the first time.
- [04:09]
Unknown
Yeah, it's, it's, it's long overdue, I think. And I think people have been following what you all have been building an anchor. Watch quite closely and with anticipation because it's something that we all feel as we were just talking before this, like, whether you're a pleb or you're a big old whale, people are worried about losing their bitcoin, whether that be through a $5 wrench or through screwing something up or whatever it is. This whole idea of bitcoin insurance, when I heard about it through you guys, I was like, wow, that's, that's pretty, that's pretty neat. So I'm curious, like, if you can just kind of like start off. First of all, how did, like, I've heard a little bit of your story. You did a great episode with Danny Knowles. Shout out to Danny gave a wonderful background of like, your time on Clubhouse and everything else. And your past experience. So I, you know, I don't. I'll always recommend people go check out Danny's show as well. But, like, for sure, maybe you can give kind of the highlight. Real, like, how did you actually get here? To be all of a sudden running this, Running this bitcoin insurance business, which is like something that just didn't exist a short time ago and now is something that very much exists and is growing what seems to be quite rapidly.
- [05:26]
Becca
Yeah, well, here I'll skip the Clubhouse history. I mean, we met on Clubhouse. Robin, Rob and I met on Clubhouse, which is awesome. And a lot of our early investors were Clubhouse. The idea of discussing the need for insurance was on Clubhouse. But let's actually go to the idea and then kind of how it's. It's morphed and grown since then. So that original conversation and the impetus for starting Anchor Watch was this concept of insured self custody. Like, okay, there's single sig. That's not safe enough, right? There's multi sig. Okay, that's a lot better. That mitigates a lot of. A lot of risks. But the risks are still there. There's still some problems. I mean, inheritance is definitely still a problem. And you should be able to get insurance on that. Like we. Every other asset class has insurance. You should be able to hold your bitcoin, have your wallets, have an insurance policy that if something goes wrong, it's insured. And so that was the impetus for the starting the company. And, you know, I personally jumped in. I actually first invested in Rob for the first few days. That was actually my involvement. And then I was just helping him out with more of the business aspects. He was starting to build the tech mvp, which was really an attestation at the time. It was kind of this early. It's. It's effectively what proof of reserves is or proof of assets anyway. And, you know, so he built that and that the premise was, okay, if you're going to ensure self custody, at least, you know, the question is, how would you prove that you even had the bitcoin to start with to insure?
- [07:07]
Unknown
Right.
- [07:08]
Becca
So it's. It's a fraud question, you know, because I could sign up for a policy if it's self custody, and say, like, I have a thousand bitcoin, and then I get the. I pay for the insurance policy. I sign up for the insurance policy, and then I'm like, oops, my thousand bitcoin were stolen. And then the insurance company has to like pay you the bajillions. Of dollars for a thousand bitco. And so the original kind of tech work was to say, well we can at least prove they have the exact bitcoin that they say they have. So if you say you have 10 Bitcoin, you can prove that at the time of signing up for the policy you have those 10 bitcoin. So he was starting to build that attestation. I was giving him some help on the business side. Dex and pro formas and financials and help, stuff like that. We were having a great time, working really well together. And so I signed up a few days later, like a week later. Signed on as this co founder.
- [08:02]
Unknown
Didn't take long.
- [08:03]
Becca
No, no, no, I mean days, just individual days. I pulled like two all nighters that week. I hadn't done an all nighter since college. It was fun. And I had been at Starbucks for a long time and ready for the next adventure. And here it was. And I thought the premise was really good and I wasn't going to leave my career for something that I didn't think was commercially viable. You know, I wasn't interested in doing something really cool. But who knows if it's going to work like I thought this would work. And so that's where we started. And when we then actually went out to the insurance market, what we found is that even if you could prove that somebody held the bitcoin at the moment of signing up, the insurers were not comfortable insuring that anyway. They needed more assurance that it couldn't. That really owners committing insurance fraud, that was the main concern and still is. And so we had to go back to the drawing board. We just weren't able to get traditional insurer buy in to this idea because of the concern of customer fraud. And so we just had to continue to develop a solution. We're like, look, insurance still needs to exist. I mean the problem is still there. How can we bridge the problem to a solution? The solution being insurance, like what can we do to bridge those? And we also decided that or realized that it was really important to go after larger clients to make it commercially work. We absolutely wanted to be able to serve retail customers plebs. That was very important to us as founders. So we weren't trying to walk away from retail but to attract the big insurers. We also needed to add commercial. So that was kind of our new challenge is like, okay, well we still want to support retail, we need to support really large sums and we need to provide more guarantee to the insurers that insurance fraud will be much more challenging to pull off or to attempt. And so Rob went down a rabbit hole of doing custom scripts. So, like, you know, things that would allow us, well, okay, while you're insured, Anchor Watch can sign as a required signer, but after, if the policy ends, it's just self custody again.
- [10:26]
Unknown
Right.
- [10:27]
Becca
So it's like in that way, it's kind of enhanced self custody. So it's like you still have your own keys, but this idea that we temporarily also have a required key, but if you want to stop working with us, we're powerless again. And so he was looking at doing customers Bitcoin script to do that. And through his research of writing that script, he came across Miniscript, which, you know, we've talked about very publicly. Miniscript was invented by the Blockstream team back in 2018, 2019, and it really did everything already that we were looking to do in a custom way, which obviously de risks the custom aspect very much.
- [11:07]
Unknown
Right.
- [11:07]
Becca
So now it's this, this actual, you know, it's been tested. It's part of Bitcoin core. It doesn't require changes. Other people are familiar with it. It's auditable. Everything is visible on chain, so even customers can, can verify that. The way we set up a vault, when we say that it goes back to self custody, like that is provable, that is on chain today. And so when you work with us the way it would, the process would be, okay, you decide that you want to work with us, you will have your own private keys. We don't have a backup of them. It's truly private keys. You set them up yourself. We on an onboarding call, we guide you through setting up your own private keys and then you're registering them to the Anchor Watch vault, that then creates your Anchor Watch vault. So it's your UTXO. This is your vault. It has a location on L1 on chain. And if you wanted to, once we have then created your vault, you can take the output descriptor from that vault if you want, and you can take it to a third party auditor and say, hey, I was going to sign up. You know, I'm at the finish line of signing up with Anchor Watch. They've created this vault for me. They say that this is how the time locks work. They say that they're a required signer, but they can't sign unilaterally. Is that true? Like, that's what Anchor Watch says, but is that actually how it's set up? Like, how do I know?
- [12:34]
Unknown
Right?
- [12:34]
Becca
And so somebody who knows miniscript and who knows Bitcoin script, they could actually look at your output descriptor, your exact output descriptor and verify they're like, yep, here's that time lock. Yep, yep, yep. What they say is accurate. And then you could come put your bitcoin in it after that. And so by setting that up, that allowed us ultimately to get Lloyds of London. So we explained to Lloyds of London, hey, when we do it this way, when we use miniscript temporarily, we are required signers. So while you Lloyds have liability, we actually have our own key. It's not the customer's key, but that key must sign a transaction while they're insured. And that While it doesn't 100% remove the ability of a customer to attempt fraud, it certainly like it turns it into a whole nother thing.
- [13:28]
Unknown
Right.
- [13:28]
Becca
Because they're going to have to like, if they're acting, acting funny, right. We have the opportunity to be like, what's going on?
- [13:37]
Unknown
Right.
- [13:38]
Becca
And we have the immediate connection to law enforcement if you file a claim, you know, we are working very quickly with exchanges and law enforcement to track coins and, and all those kind of things that gave the insurers a lot more peace of mind. So then they signed on, we got Lloyds of London. We became a Lloyds of London cover holder. We are the only Lloyds of London. There are two cover holders in the world that can sell kind of crypto related insurance. Only two. And we are the only one who can serve retail customers. So that was really important to us to continue being able to serve plebs. And so currently we are the only way that if you're just an individual, you know, you have your family, you have your bitcoin, you want it to be held in a super secure way with insurance, we're the only way.
- [14:26]
Unknown
I think that's so, so fascinating just because it's like this kind of merger of the super high tech bitcoin miniscript side.
- [14:33]
Yeah.
- [14:33]
But then like the, the kind of you know, low tech or just old school insurance business, like it's this, this melding of the two. And you know when I like heard you guys were like with Lloyds of London, I like knew of Lloyds of London just because it's like one of those like names that you know about, like I'm not in that business but like you just, you know, they've been around for like a few hundred years.
- [14:53]
Walker
Right.
- [14:54]
Becca
So like the oldest insurer in the world. Yeah, yeah.
- [14:56]
Unknown
Like they developed a decent reputation it seems. Was that, like, how was that experience? Like, were they pretty receptive? Like, when you came in here talking about miniscript and these things? Like, did they actually, like. I don't know, they have the chops to, like, actually, I mean, clearly they did, but, like, they groked that relatively quickly, or was that still a pretty laborious process? Just talking through?
- [15:16]
Becca
Yeah, I think both are true at the same time. So I'll differentiate Lloyd's versus the rest of the traditional insurers that we talk to. So the rest, they don't have any experience at all. So we would get on pitch calls, which is effectively what they are.
- [15:33]
Unknown
You.
- [15:33]
Becca
You approach here. I didn't talk to State Farm, but that's a household name, so let's pretend I did. I would literally, like, cold call State Farm and say, like, you know, we would find their more or less their biz dev team, which they all have, and call in and say, hey, we're, you know, a small startup. Here's what we're trying to do. You know, we'd love to talk to you about it. They would set up a pitch call and we would pitch the idea to them. They were all very intellectually interested, right. Because they get a lot of the same stuff every day. And so we come in, we're trying to do this bitcoin insurance. It's fascinating. It's a good story, right? The way that we've created the solution and really mitigated a lot of the risk, not all of the risk. There's still wrench attacks. There's still. There's still risks, but we've mitigated a lot of. And so we went down this path where they're like, oh, that's so interesting. Like, and send us some backup information. So we'd get into these conversations that would end up going weeks or even into months. And then at the end of it, they would be like, well, this was definitely the most interesting thing that I've had the opportunity to take a look at, but we don't have appetite for crypto. And you're like, cool, thanks for that use of five weeks. That was really great. So Lloyd's was different. So eventually then we found our way to Lloyd's. You know, they're out of London. They are a little more expensive. But the reason for that is that they take on the weird stuff. That's. That's what they have. Over the hundreds of years that they've been in business, they have ended up being the marketplace for insurance weird stuff. So, you know, previously like, the last big industry to have to break into insurance would be cannabis, right? So all the, you know, cannabis, whether it was growers or shops or whatever, they. They were debanked, right? They. So they had huge debanking issues and they couldn't get insurance. And so eventually Lloyd's became the place where, like, if you're a cannabis company and you need insurance, Lloyd's was willing to do it, whereas the other insurers weren't. And so we just kind of fall into that camp of, like, Lloyd's is more willing to be neutral in their assessment of any given industry or business and assess it based on the real risks and. And reputational risk is part of that. So it's not that they're not looking, but. And if. If it's. They deem it to be an insurable product, they're open to doing it. So for that reason, all the existing crypto insurance, and I use that word crypto on purpose because, you know, everything out there generally was a blend. So all the existing crypto insurance policies had been written by Lloyds, So there have been policies written in crypto since 2014. That's when the first one was actually written.
- [18:42]
Unknown
I did not know it went back that far, actually.
- [18:44]
Becca
It does, yeah. And so, you know, when you hear about, like, coinbase has a $350 million policy, BitGo has a $250 million policy, or like, you know, there are some whales who have their cassacious coins, you know, the thousand bitcoin cassacious coins, they have those insured, right? And so anything that does exist was underwritten by Lloyds and there's a few insurance companies. So Lloyds is really a marketplace. It's a brand and a marketplace, and then under it are all these different insurance companies who choose to participate in this marketplace. So they're paying a fee to Lloyds to be part of the Lloyd's pool of insurers. And so within that, there's a few of these, they're called syndicates, who have developed the expertise and the appetite. They have the appetite for crypto. And so they, you know, went in. And so, as you can imagine, if you're going to be willing to write a $350 million policy to Coinbase like you, you've got to get in there, right? So they. To. To gain that comfort. So they've educated themselves through the years on various custody methods, procedures, signatures. So by the time we made it to Lloyd's, people would be surprised in terms of how knowledgeable they are, because we went to these same syndicates that have already underwritten other companies. And so actually we found our underwriter to be extremely knowledgeable, like extremely knowledgeable. And so really we only had to educate him and them on miniscript itself and because miniscript was new to them and so. But they, they already were extremely knowledgeable on bitcoin, bitcoin, code, multisig, you know, all that kind of stuff, like at the cryptographic level, like they're, they're knowledgeable. So it wasn't. Once we found the right people, it wasn't that hard from there. You know, we.
- [20:48]
Unknown
Refreshing though probably once you did find people.
- [20:50]
Becca
Yeah, impressive. Impressive, actually. Like a real, a real knowledge. That said, I mean that, that's limited to a very small number of individual humans.
- [21:02]
Unknown
Right.
- [21:02]
Becca
So there's this, you know, let's say there's 20 people within the various companies under Lloyds who have really a bitcoiner level of knowledge on the tech. It's not a ton of them, but they're there and they're the ones underwriting the business. And, and we're in the middle of working on writing some very large policies, like very, very large, that are so large that we will need to go outside of these few companies that are already, already participating in crypto. And so, you know, we will get to this point of having to educate more to, to get to the size policy that we want. But I think at this point now we feel really good about our ability to do that.
- [21:49]
Walker
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- [23:48]
Unknown
Your first time setting up a hardware.
- [23:50]
Walker
Wallet, or you are a well seasoned psychopath. It is bitcoin only and and fully open source. No need to trust me, you can head to their GitHub and verify that for yourself. When you go to Bitbox Swiss Walker and use the promo code walker, not only do you get 5% off, but you also help support this podcast. So thank you.
- [24:10]
Unknown
So I think a lot of people, and I'll include myself in this because I'm also a human who has knee jerk reactions to things. It's very easy to. When you as a, like a, you know, a very toxic bitcoiner, you see things from the, let's say tradfi world or the fiat world, different products, services, whatever they may be, and you see those sort of brought into the bitcoin world and maybe your first reaction is like, well, you know, what the heck, I thought we were trying to burn all this to the ground, I thought, you know, but like, you know, it's one of those things where not, not everything is inherently bad. Like there's just a lot of, you know, fiat distorts incentives. Right. So there's a lot of things may have been distorted, but I think insurance is one of those things where it's like, yeah, the insurance industry may have some issues, especially like in the US with just the way it interfaces with the health care industry as well. There's a lot of predatory stuff that happens.
- [25:03]
Becca
Yeah, Like I think health insurance, I think is just the worst thing about America. I honestly do, I think like that along with the, you know, military industrial complex, the health insurance complex is just Damaging to America. Like yeah, so I'm with you and.
- [25:23]
Unknown
Tied in with the, you know, the pharmaceutical industry too. So it's just a, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a hydra. Like it's a many headed monster. But you know, so like, but on the point of insurance specifically it's like this is something, yes, it exists in the fiat world now, it exists in the bitcoin world and it has, but you guys made it available for retail. This seems like something that is a little bit less contentious maybe you know, than even like you know, trying to earn yield on your bitcoin by giving it to a, you know, a bank or whatever, whatever it may be. Is that the, has the reaction that you've found been mostly positive? Have there been some like or, or has there been still a decent amount of pushback that you've gotten? How have you found that reception to be?
- [26:04]
Becca
I would say we, there's a few things. So overall reception is really positive. And people who want insurance feel fine about property insurance, right? Like that's, they, you know, that's, we're a subset of property insurance. It's way less contentious than health insurance. And if people understand and want insurance, they're not put off by it. I think there's a few things that are interesting or that people question. So one of them is the concept of dollar denominated insurance. So buying a million dollar policy versus a ten bitcoin policy. And we can talk about that. And then I think the other thing just with our current product that some maxis, you know, feel feelings about is that we have a recovery layer on the vault. So if you die and you need support, we have a layer, a time locked layer that we call the recovery layer that allows customers to, or their beneficiaries rather to regain access to the bitcoin if you die. When Anchor Watch and a third party company have the ability to together recover those assets. So more or less there is a multi institutional custody layer in the vault that allows access if you pass away or if you are victim of a wrench attack where they steal all the customer keys. Because I mean it just, it provides more or less fail safe inheritance access and that happens right before it becomes pure self custody. So pure self custody that unlocks when you're not insured anymore because that's the stipulation of the insurance company. They're like if the customer has all the keys and they can control it unilaterally, that needs to be after the insurance policy ends, the Recovery layer is there right before the insurance policy ends. And we did that because it, we can insure ourselves. So we, the insurance policy specifically covers if we misuse that layer. So if Anchor Watch and our partner, which our partner is Coincorner, they're a regulated exchange out of the Isle of Man. We're very public about who it is. Bitcoin only exchange, they've been holding customer assets for more than 10 years. Never had a loss, never had anything shady. So good, good partner. But if we in Coincorner colluded to steal a customer's Bitcoin using that recovery layer that's covered by the insurance specifically. So we're saying, hey, bitcoiners, we know that like not your keys, not your coin, we know that's a fear. And to address that fear, we made sure that that is specifically covered by the insurance. Because remember, the liability, the actual dollar liability is held by Lloyd's of London. So even if Anchor Watch misbehaves, Lloyd's is good for it.
- [29:05]
Unknown
Right.
- [29:05]
Becca
And so we have, we have feelings on that. But you know, it might be interesting to go. And by the way, that's like a minority of people. Like, that's, those are just the two things that we get a lot of questions about. And for most people, especially if they're very inheritance focused, like if they're just a family man trying to make sure that their treasure map that like, you know, is it going to be good enough? Then those people, I think they understand the benefits of having recovery options and that's part of the reason why they're coming to us. So.
- [29:39]
Unknown
Yeah, and I want to kind of go down that, that inheritance rabbit hole a little bit, but maybe like just. Well, actually, you know what, yeah, let's go down there and then we'll circle back.
- [29:49]
Becca
Circle back to denomination. Yeah, yeah.
- [29:51]
Unknown
Because I think that like that idea of what is, what does this look like on a, in a hyper bitcoinized world or on a bitcoin standard or is, you know, that stepping stone. That's really interesting. But I do want to talk about that inheritance piece because a lot of people, you know, will say like, you know, well, I'll just like die with my bitcoin. And like, that's all well and good, like until you have a family. And then I think it becomes very clear for anybody, like, I have a, I have a young son. I don't want to die with my bitcoin. Then what was the point of all this? Like, why, why?
- [30:22]
Becca
No, I should have bought all the Chairs.
- [30:25]
Unknown
Yeah, I could have, I could have been having just a rooms full of.
- [30:28]
Becca
Chairs, just chairs everywhere, if that was the goal.
- [30:31]
Unknown
As far as the eye can see.
- [30:32]
Becca
But.
- [30:32]
Unknown
So no, but really like you bit, we. Everybody says like, bitcoin is generational wealth and that's great, but like, what's your plan? How does that actually work? So you guys have now, like, this is part of your emerging business now. This is something that you guys are now offering. Can you talk about that a little bit and maybe just like talk about like what you guys identify in the. As the problem in terms of. I know you've had conversations with a lot of folks as you've built out this product. So, like, what have you seen as the problem? And how did you guys actually address that in your, in your technical solution?
- [31:04]
Becca
Yep. So I mean, here the problem is, is the treasure map, you know, the. How I'm communicating. Let's. Let's be stereotypical of bitcoiners and say that they're. They're mostly men, right? So let's be. Just keep it straightforward and say that what we're talking about is a married man, maybe with kids, and his wife is not a hardcore maxi, right. So she's not up with the signing devices, the hardware, wallets, all of that supportive. It's their, you know, that's how they've achieved wealth and everything. But they're just concerned, right? So they have some sort of treasure map, you know, usually starts in a file cabinet. There's certain information in a file cabinet, and it sends them on a little bit of a scavenger hunt. Because everybody knows you don't want to just leave the seed phrase in the file cabinet. That's not resilient. It can be stolen, like. And so they split it up. And we hear all sorts of stories, like, of different ways that people have split it up. Not that people are telling us it's literally in this location, but they'll, they'll give us hints of what they've done and they're like, I think she's got it. I think she. I think she's got it. But I'm worried, right? And I'm. I'm very open with my pre anchor watch experience myself that I had, you know, pure, pure self custody. And I had done my version of a treasure map, which I think was super straightforward, like, very easy to follow. And I told my family, like, okay, all you need to do is start in this location. If you start there and you read the words, you're gonna be fine, right? And so I went through this, I had three different conversations with three sets of family members and they're like, got it, got it. Sounds good. And like four to six months later, I don't remember exactly how long I went back to them. And I was like, hey, remember, you know, remember the bitcoin inheritance plan? Like we good, everybody remember? And one of them remembered with prompting, right? And I was like, remember, you have to start at the one location, the one location. If I die, where would you go to for the. For to get started? And with that prompting, they remembered the other two. They were like, no, they didn't remember. They straight up didn't remember. All they had to remember was one location. That's it. And they didn't remember. These are smart people. My family are high achieving smart people. And they didn't remember. So that's the problem ultimately. And, and what people have expressed is that like maybe they already use a collaborative custodian and they're pretty happy with their collaborative, collaborative custodian. But the challenge is it is collaborative custody, which means it's self custody with a backup. So you can have lost a key. Let's just say it's a two of three. You can have lost a key, but if you lose both your keys, you're toast. If you die and your wife can't remember the location of at least one of those keys and the pin code, if it's a hardware wallet or the seed phrase, you're toast, right? So it still puts a lot of pressure on the beneficiary, on the wife or the family or the estate or whomever it is, to at least hang on to a partial set of information. And just based on my own personal experience, like, it's not without risk. I mean, hopefully, like, you know, you can reiterate, you can have an annual reminder conversation, you can do all these things and hopefully pound into your head. But you just can't assume that people understand that they grock how unreversible this is. Like if you can't re. If you cannot find the seed phrase, like there is nobody who can help you with that.
- [35:12]
Unknown
Right?
- [35:13]
Becca
And people just really have a hard time conceptualizing that if they're not native bitcoiners.
- [35:19]
Unknown
Right?
- [35:21]
Becca
And so, you know, that's what people share with us, is these treasure map fears. And so our inheritance protocol, the technical solution, I already kind of explained, like we have day in, day out, when you work with Anchor Watch, you have your own private keys. If you want to send Bitcoin, 90 plus percent of our clients actually opt for a HODL discount, gives you a big discount on your insurance premium. And we actually disable the send button. So if you wanted to send Bitcoin, it would be extra calls with us to like turn that back on that functionality. But if you wanted to spend Bitcoin day one, it would be customer signs with their signing devices and anchor watch signs. And then the bitcoin can move after the insurance policy ends. It's pure self custody. As long as the customer still has their signing devices, it is self custody, like pure and simple, even if our software disappears. So if you signed in to Trident, our software and like the website is down, like we're just gone, gone. As long as you still have your keys and your output descriptor, you can actually still access your bitcoin on Bitcoin core.
- [36:33]
Unknown
Right?
- [36:34]
Becca
So this is totally Bitcoin native. And then that recovery layer is there one month before your policy ends where it's Anchor watch plus Coincorner together can move the bitcoin. And the way time locks work on on Bitcoin because again, this is native. The it's the smart contract is checking how much time has passed since the vault was created. So once you hit 11 months, the recovery layer opens. So if you die before that, we would tell the beneficiary, okay, you just need to wait. So let's say you signed up January 1st. The recovery layer is going to come available on December 1st. So if you die in June, I'd be telling Carla, okay, deal with, deal with your family, grieve, deal with the funeral. It's going to be sitting here safe and sound for you. And on December 1st, we and CoinCorner can recover your assets for you. If you want to keep being our customer, we'll get you ahead of time. We'll get you set up with your own vault, your own signing devices. I mean, Carla is a bad example because she is so, so knowledgeable. But you know, not everybody is in that situation. So, you know, we would educate them on what they need to do. And then on December 1, sometime in that month, we and Coin Corner would move the bitcoin from your vault into the wife's new vault and more or less continue protecting her, go forward. If that's not what a beneficiary wanted to do, if they wanted to liquidate it or otherwise, you know, we would just help them like where what are you trying to do with it? And we'll just support. We don't provide a recovery or we don't charge a Recovery fee. This is just a service for our clients. And so the way those time locks work is, let's say Your policy expires December 31st in this example. And so the way time locks work is every year we're going to get together and sign a transaction together that will act as our key health check. So we'll just do it the once a year we'd sign a transaction which effectively restarts the clock.
- [38:40]
Unknown
Right.
- [38:40]
Becca
What's actually happening is we're doing a self send. So we're sending it from this vault into an identical next year vault but with new time locks. And so a couple of months out, maybe in October, I'm like, hey, Walker, it's around. We want to get time on the calendar in December to sign your, to do your health check and to restart the lockdown time locks for next year when it's good for you to get on a call with us, we don't hear back from you, right? So we're like, all right, so a couple of weeks later we're checking in again. Now we're starting to, you know, be very clear that like, hey, on December 31st, your vault is going to become self custody. No problem. You know, just make sure you have your signing devices, make sure you have your output descriptor, make sure, you know, we still don't hear from you. So let's say then your policy actually then goes to self custody. And so it's still safe and sound. It's not going anywhere, but it's just sitting there in self custody. We will actually reach out to your beneficiary because we don't claim ownership ever. This is still your bitcoin. Whether it's never ours, we are not saying, ah, you left it there, it's ours now.
- [39:54]
Unknown
Finders keepers.
- [39:55]
Becca
Yeah. No, no, this is the client's Bitcoin and is never anchor watches bitcoin ever. And so unless you request that we do it faster, which customers can do, they can say, I don't want you to wait 90 days. But that would be our standard at 90 days after your policy ends, we still haven't heard from you and we've tried a lot. Then we'd be reaching out to your. We collect two primary and secondary beneficiary. We'd start reaching out to your primary and then your secondary saying, hey, we're trying to get a hold of Walker. You're named as a beneficiary on his account. Would you be able to help us get in touch with him? And we're assuming that either the primary or the secondary can inform us that you've passed away. Now you're already in self custody, right? But the whole premise here is that the wife doesn't know where the signing devices are, doesn't know the PIN codes. And that's for a lot of people. That's a benefit, right? Like they never had to teach her about it because it's just not required for this custody version or this custody model. And so she'd be like, ah, okay, so actually he passed away last month or he passed away in November. And yeah, sorry, it just got away from me and I forgot to reach out and tell you or I didn't even know that we had a policy. But either way, like now that you've told me, yes, he died. So what do we do next?
- [41:18]
Unknown
Right?
- [41:19]
Becca
We're like, I'm sorry to hear that, but because the time locks in Bitcoin, it's just checking has the amount of time passed. So once we've hit 16, 17, 20 months, the answer is still yes, that amount of time has passed. So even though it's self custody, the recovery layer does still work, right? So she's not like, oh my God, I only have 30 days or I'm locked out forever. That's not the way the tech works. It's once it's available, always available. So even if it took us until May of next year to hear from her, to finally get contact with her or the secondary beneficiary, eventually we'll find the rightful owner, because if we can't find those people, it belongs to the estate. So then the state, the states of your residence actually determines who is the rightful owner to your assets. And now that's the rightful owner of your. If we can't find your beneficiaries, and so we would eventually find the person, the recovery layer will still work and we will recover the assets. So that, that is the technical way that we can offer this foolproof inheritance. And then we just. The inheritance protocol also just has some additional things that make it easier for people. So within your dashboard, as soon as you sign up there, there's a couple of buttons. There's a proof of assets button, which is effectively, effectively a personal attestation, but it's instantaneous. So you hit proof of assets. It we actually then do the cryptographic check and pull verification that yes, your Bitcoin is sitting in your vault and it spits out a PDF, like an official looking PDF that says, yep, as of July 1st at 1:50pm, Walker holds X Bitcoin in this particular UTXO, Anchor Watch is the service provider. And we verify based on this cryptographic proof that that is there as of this moment. And so that is something that you can print out as many times as you want. You could use it for bank loans, you could use it for just taxes and just record keeping of your balance sheet. But you can also give it to your trust attorney or your estate lawyer. You can put in your file cabinet if you want.
- [43:37]
Unknown
Right.
- [43:37]
Becca
You don't have to, if you don't want to list how much you have, but it is available. And then the other thing, there's another button for your, a state lawyer for your record keeping that is just a instruction sheet for that beneficiary. So again, like the whole idea is here is that you're not putting pressure on people to remember things because memories are fallible, like very fallible, as has proven in my family. So this sheet is more or less just explaining like, hey, this individual named here holds Bitcoin with Anchor Watch. Anchor Watch. It provides some information about Anchor Watch and it says if this individual has died, to kick off the inheritance protocol, contact us here and we'll walk you through it. Here's what you'll need. You know, death certificate plus, depending on what state you live in, sometimes the states have additional documentation. And so we're going to do that verification. You do not need to file an insurance claim. This is not an insurance claim. The, the Bitcoin is not lost.
- [44:44]
Unknown
Right.
- [44:44]
Becca
So the Bitcoin has not been lost or stolen. We know exactly where it is. It's sitting there safe and sound. This is our Anchor Watch standards to return it to its rightful owner. That's a good thing, by the way. Like, it just means it's straightforward. Like you don't need to pay a deductible, you don't need to pay a fee like you would if it was an insurance claim. Instead, this is just returning your assets to you. So it just gives them the instructions, gives them like three forms of contact so with us and just gives them the, whether it's the beneficiary, the wife, or a trust attorney or a trustee of your trust, whomever, it just gives them sufficient information, everything they would need to kick off this process and enable us to return the Bitcoin to you. So it's both straightforward but also very comprehensive. And, and you know, I mentioned you like, I'm going through a really serious health, health thing where I have to think about mortality in a very real way. And we started this work before any of that.
- [45:52]
Unknown
Right.
- [45:52]
Becca
We started it actually based on customer requests. Like, hey, it would be really great if you just had something that I could give to my trust lawyer for them to hang on to. They just put it in my file and it explains what they need to do. I was like, oh, that's. Yeah, I can't believe I didn't think of that. Like, yes, that would be really great. And so that's actually where it came from. And so we were. We. Maybe three to four months ago, we kicked off that work. We consulted with various trust attorneys and estate attorneys, you know, consulted with the states, got a better understanding of what really needs to happen from a legal standpoint, from the fiat standpoint and how probate works and all those kind of things. And we just made sure that what we had built, both technically, but now also what we had built in terms of how our terms of service are worded, that these letters are available, that from a fiat lawyer standpoint, that it is done in a way that makes it as smooth as possible for the customer and just makes it as foolproof, that it's just easy. Like, if you die, God forbid, we're moving it over. And so then that was already going on. But I do have this ability now to think of it really personally. Like, really, really personally and say, look, do I feel comfortable with this? Does this make me feel safe? Because I might need it. Like, I might need it to work soon. And what would I. Yeah, same. Jason, with you. Totally with you. But no, I mean, it's given me a very empathetic eye.
- [47:38]
Unknown
Right.
- [47:39]
Becca
And. And the reality is, even with that context, I wouldn't change it. Like, we. We have not had to go back and change anything. Because I've thought about it differently. No, I'm thinking about it very clearly, and I'm really happy with it. Like, I am, as a. As a customer. Like, I am happy with it. It feels good. It does not put any pressure on my family. Another kind of funny thing about what we hear in people's treasure maps that should make people think, honestly, is including my own, everybody's treasure maps include some names of, like, trusted helpers, right? You know, contact this person. Like, here's the instructions, here's the treasure map. But also, if you can't figure it out, contact this person. And people do tell us who their person is regularly. And the thing is, is the entire plebiverse are appointing at the same, like, five people. I'm not kidding. I'm not.
- [48:45]
Unknown
Really?
- [48:46]
Becca
Yes, really.
- [48:48]
Unknown
That's kind of my. I mean, please actually, like, don't say who it is.
- [48:50]
Becca
Yeah, I'm not gonna say. I'm not gonna say. But like, it is the same people again and again and again and again. And if you told me who you used, I would not be shocked if it was one of these five people.
- [49:04]
Unknown
Do those five people, like, know. Do they like, know that all these people are putting their names down or is that just.
- [49:10]
Becca
I think it's mixed. I think it's mixed. I think they. All the names are people I would personally trust.
- [49:19]
Unknown
Right.
- [49:19]
Becca
And whether they knew I had put their name down or not, I am confident they would give help to my family.
- [49:28]
Unknown
Right.
- [49:29]
Becca
Rob gets pinged regularly. He has this year helped multiple people. Not through the lens of Anchor Watch, just. Just individuals where, I mean, tragically, their beneficiaries reached out. One of them was like an individual themselves. The other one was attorneys and just saying, like, hey, you know, my husband died and we had. I have this information and I don't know what to do with it. Can you help? And more or less handed over information to Rob that like, were. Rob a bad actor, you know, he could have just stolen the bitcoin.
- [50:11]
Unknown
Right.
- [50:12]
Becca
I mean, obviously he's an incredibly high integrity person, so he just helped help them. And then similarly with the lawyers, they reached out and were like, hey, we're trying to recover assets for a family. Tragically, they lost their son. We have this information, you know, lots of letters and numbers and from, you know, from a few different pieces of paper. And we're trying to make sense of it, you know, so. And so anyway, these five people. Yeah, I mean, it's good that there are high trust individuals in the community, but like, God forbid an explosion happens at a bitcoin conference, because literally. Yeah, for real. Because literally everybody's safe helper. Yeah. Like, so anyway, we feel really good about our, our procedures and our, the foolproof nature. And it just takes a lot of the, the trust out of it. And it just makes it very predicted and documented and legal and all of those things.
- [51:26]
Unknown
And so this, this process or the inheritance protocol that you guys have, this runs alongside like in tandem with the, the insurance policy as well. Like you need to have both, I assume, or you need to.
- [51:38]
Becca
Well, the insurance protocol is just included. It's just the way we run our.
- [51:42]
Unknown
Part of the package.
- [51:43]
Becca
So it's not an extra fee, it's. It's nothing. It's just that is when you work with Anchor Watch, you are getting custody services and insurance against loss.
- [51:55]
Unknown
Right?
- [51:57]
Becca
If. If it's a covered loss. So a wrench attack, I mean any sort of physical events, right. Like if a tornado hit one in one signing device and the hurricane hit another one. Because we do require the three devices to be not in the same location. And so many. So dispersed keys mitigate many physical risks just like they do with self custody multisig. But it's covered, right. If, if one of those kind of freak accidents, you know, house fire in the same time as. And whatever. It does cover all that, but it covers wrench attacks, which is unfortunately like a quite a growing concern for every.
- [52:39]
Unknown
Especially in France a lot of right now.
- [52:42]
Becca
Yeah, I mean it's. That's definitely the current like hot spot for sure. For the last 90 days for sure. But they're all over. And for everyone that you read on the list, right. Like Jameson's list is a really comprehensive one. So you know, a lot of people are very familiar with that. Jameson public like tweets whenever a new one comes through, which I think is a great service to everybody. But for everyone that makes the list, there is a significant more that dumped.
- [53:17]
Unknown
Right.
- [53:20]
Becca
Often that are successful. Like, because the idea is like, let's say somebody held you up, kidnapped you, whether you're an individual or a company executive, and successfully stole some bitcoin. A lot of people, like, they very actively don't want that to become public information. I don't mean because of like embarrassments. I mean because then it's just telling more people that you still have bitcoin. Right.
- [53:47]
Unknown
And you're a soft target.
- [53:48]
Becca
And you're. Yeah. And you're a successful target.
- [53:50]
Unknown
Right.
- [53:52]
Becca
So for privacy reasons, a lot of people, if, if it's possible to keep out of the media. They absolutely do keep out of the media. So there is, unfortunately, we just started selling knr, which is kidnap and ransom as well. So we haven't actually even started advertising that yet. I can tell you a little bit about it. But. Yeah, but what that means kidnap and ransom and our wrench attack policy cover different things. So if you all. Which I'll get into, but if you have reason to be concerned that like you are at a higher risk of being wrench attacked, you really should have both policies. And I'll explain why. But because we're doing kidnap and ransom now, K and R for short, you know, we. We get some access to information in terms of frequency and stuff. And all I would say is that, yeah, wrench attacks are real. Like it's a real threat for real.
- [54:50]
Unknown
And just with More than a wrench. You know, like the wrench is the like. But like, usually they don't actually have a wrench. They've got perhaps something worse.
- [54:59]
Right, right.
- [55:00]
Becca
And I mean, the ones that are. The current trend is that they do violence quickly.
- [55:06]
Unknown
Right.
- [55:06]
Becca
So it used to be in the US and Europe, you know, kidnaps and ransom events did happen, but they tended to be a little bit of like, gentleman's warfare. Like, they weren't actually like hurting the people and. Or even treating them that badly.
- [55:24]
Unknown
Right.
- [55:24]
Becca
But a lot of these as they're going more towards tactics that were more common in like South America during drug cartel stuff. And like, they're going straight to cutting off fingers or pulling out fingernails and like, going straight to torture, at least like something really quickly to demonstrate to the family or the company that like, no, we're serious, like, we will do this. And so, yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a real thing, unfortunately. So the difference between kidnap and ransom and our rentac policy, and we may in the future actually combine these into one comprehensive policy, but we're still working on that because we want to keep costs really manageable, especially if you're not. If you're like really pleb and your or your OPSEC is excellent and like, nobody even knows that you have it, then like, maybe just, you know, using our standard plan is maybe better for you. What generally though, the difference between the two is that our policy covers the stolen bitcoin itself.
- [56:33]
Unknown
Right.
- [56:33]
Becca
So if the gun is to. Somebody said your head. My head recovery partner said any heads, guns, your children's heads.
- [56:41]
Unknown
Right.
- [56:41]
Becca
So and the. And the result is that your bitcoin is stolen, they force all of us to sign transactions and steal the bitcoin. That's covered by our policy. What our policy does not cover, but a kidnap and ransom policy does cover, is a ransom payment. So, you know, guns are to the same combination of heads, whatever it may be, and they demand that your family collect $5 million in cash.
- [57:13]
Unknown
Right.
- [57:14]
Becca
That $5 million can be covered by a kidnap and ransom policy. So actually your bitcoin, maybe you became a target because they knew you had bitcoin. But if ultimately the money sent is collected from elsewhere, that's a kidnap and ransom. The other things that KNR covers, and especially for companies, this is very, very important, it's the actual professional hostage negotiators. So if you had a kidnapping situation in your family, you know, or we can go. Go farther away from home. So. But whatever. So if somebody had a kidnaping ransom situation and they didn't have KNR more or less. You'd call 911 right? Like that's the, that's what you do. And then you're working with first year local, maybe they will call in the FBI and you're kind of going through that process. But if you wanted like real professional hostage negotiators like former CIA, like this is what they do then you want to engage one of these top notch firms that do just that. And so then you'd be like googling them, being like chat GPT. You're like who is the very best? How much does it cost? Can you do a cost analysis between the top ones? And then you see their cost and you're like oh my God, like that's more than the ransom. Like ah, like how am I going to pay for that? But they're not going to start work until you've paid a retainer. And so then you're like are they even good? So now I'm sending them six figures and like let's hope that they're actually who Google tells me they are. Like it's not great, right? So but when you have a K and R policy the insurers and our K and R policy is also Lloyd's so the insurers already have the top hostage negotiating firms on retainer. So as soon as a kidnap occurs along with 911 you would call us more or less and we would kick off that and immediately the hostage negotiators would be on the job working alongside law enforcement. They would be coordinating. They're taking more or less everything off the family or the company's responsibility and they're taking on that responsibility. And so the, yes, the policy also covers the cost of that which can be very significant. But it's also just the speed and the access and the professionalism and then there's additional benefits like you know, there's some mental health and like those kind of benefits that a K R policy provides that like after the event, you know there's things like that. But really, really it's the, the cost of the hostage negotiators, the, their services being immediate, like immediate immediate and then the cost of a ransom as, as well.
- [60:10]
Unknown
So let me ask you because obviously like kidnapping and ransomware or excuse me, ransomware, ransom insurance, that that's not necessarily like a new thing. Like that's something that's been you know, around in terms of the like the wrench attack policy. Is that somewhat of a new, a new paradigm just given that it hasn't necessarily been like in the fiat banking system, it's a little bit different if you want to, you know, if you're trying to $5 wrench attack somebody like, you know, okay, give me the money and you're safe or whatever. But like, if you've got a, you know, distributed multi sig and, you know, somebody gets hold of, you know, two of three or whatever, like, is that an. Did you guys basically have to craft a new type of approach for this policy?
- [60:49]
Becca
Yes, we did.
- [60:50]
Unknown
Okay.
- [60:51]
Becca
So, yeah, the. This exact kind of coverage was knew from us. And so we absolutely did. We wrote the. We wrote the policy. And that's part of the duration that it took us to get to market was we really, really had to work with actuaries to kind of hone in on this risk and show them how well we mitigate it.
- [61:13]
Unknown
Right.
- [61:14]
Becca
You know, like, it will be really hard for somebody to successfully pull off a wrench attack on an anchor watch customer and get away with it at the same time. You know, so we have all sorts of. I won't go into the details for customer safety, but we definitely have lots of roadblocks built in to stretch out the process. So even if guns are to heads that, like, we can slow it down, right, we can give law enforcement the opportunity to get in. So what we hope is that over time, as our reputation builds, that just being an anchor watch customer, we will never disclose who our customers are.
- [61:55]
Unknown
Right.
- [61:55]
Becca
Like, we, we. We protect their opsec. But already some customers choose to just share it. They're like, yeah, I use anchor watch. Like, don't, don't try it. Like, I'm a terrible target. Like, they slow it down. Yeah. Like, it would be really hard for you to get something. And then even if they do, even if, like, you know, all the guns are everywhere and like, the bitcoin gets sent. The way insurance works is the stolen once we pay the customer. So let's say that happened. Your bitcoin was stolen. You survive, you file an insurance claim, we make you whole minus the deductible. So you walk away. You've been taken care of. You can take your benefit payment, go to the exchange, rebuy bitcoin with that payment. That stolen bitcoin is our property. And that's, that's not unique for us. That's just the way insurance works. If you're. If your Picasso was stolen and we paid you out $5 million for your stolen Picasso, the painting itself is the property of the insurance company. And so that's why? Then the insurance company has incentive to hire PIs to go on the underground art market and try to find that Picasso. And even if it takes 10 years, when they recover it, it's theirs and they can recoup some of their losses, right? And so the bitcoin, the stolen bitcoin is the same. Once it's been stolen and we took care of our customer, they're done. That stolen bitcoin belongs to us and we are motivated. Now we're in a forced hoddle, right? So even if we don't recover it quickly, it's. Look, we are only more and more motivated to recover it over time because it's going up in value. And so eventually, I mean, we see this again and again, eventually the thieves mess up, right? They'll make a mistake and it might be years later like the Bitfinex hack, right? It might be years later, but by the time we recover it, it's worth way more. And so again, it goes to. Why Anchor Watch customers are a terrible target because we're gonna hunt you down forever. Like I am gonna hunt you down forever. Forever. If the com. If the Anchor Watch got acquired, the new company is going to hunt you down forever because it's, it's your assets on your balance sheet. And we're just being like, I'd like to get that back, you know, and you're gonna take every, every way you can.
- [64:28]
Unknown
So, so that's, that's super interesting too. Just because, I mean, with an asset like Bitcoin, you know, it is appreciating rapidly as it, you know, demonetizes everything else. You get really incentivized to, you know, if you wait a couple of, you know, epochs for to catch these thieves, it's like, dang, okay, we actually ended up like making some, some money on this deal. Like when all is said and done, like that's kind of like. It's a bit of a paradigm shift though, right? Like that's. I mean, sure, a Picasso is also going to appreciate in value because fiat's devaluing. But like bitcoin is just the fastest, you know, fastest horse.
- [65:05]
Becca
Yeah, I mean, I think the Picasso is a, is a good analogy because, I mean, same deal, like people invest in art because it does continue to appreciate. That's why wealthy people do it. And yeah, the premise is there and for sure this is the fastest horse. And it just increases our motivation to hunt the thieves down. So if you are a thief choosing your target, you're gonna choose true pure old school self custody. Uninsured, like those are your perfect target because they're going to be most vulnerable. The gun to the head is going to work the head. The gun to your baby's head. It's going to work. Like it will work, but somebody that has a more complicated, you know, even within self custody, the like, get your multi sig away from yourself, right. Like get the other wallets that even if you agree, right, like bro, like, do not shoot my child. Like I will. I will do whatever you want. Okay. We need to fly to New Jersey.
- [66:08]
Unknown
Right.
- [66:08]
Becca
Like it makes it harder, right? Do that. Yeah. If you're not, don't. If you don't want to use anchor watch, no problem. But make it harder.
- [66:19]
Unknown
Like you should. You should never be able to like actually completely sign a bitcoin transaction from whatever your location is. Totally. Like with, okay. Your lightning wallet. Sure. With you know, a few hundred, you know, bucks that you have on it. But like for whatever you are actually saving for the long haul. Like would take a very long time for me to sign any bitcoin transactions. And not that I even have any bitcoin guys at a terrible boating accident a while ago, but if I did, it would be literally impossible for I would have to. Without revealing as much.
- [66:54]
Becca
Don't go into details, but yeah, you've made it hard.
- [66:56]
Unknown
There are many keys and they are very difficult to get to. And I can't do anything from right here. It doesn't matter what you do to me.
- [67:02]
Becca
And so like, you know, there is like.
- [67:03]
Unknown
But people are stupid too. So if I tell them like, well, I have a geographically distributed multi sig with, you know, this many, they're like, like, I don't care. I heard you have the bitcoins because you got a podcast with. It's called Tickcoins. So give me the. Give me your bitty coins.
- [67:16]
Right, right, right.
- [67:17]
And it's like, but I mean, I guess you can't really fix for human stupidity when it comes to.
- [67:22]
Becca
The thing is, is people need to think about the breadth of possible thieves too.
- [67:30]
Unknown
Right.
- [67:31]
Becca
So people will say like, why the passphrase? And I have, I have a decoy wallet. And I'm like, cool. A decoy wallet with 500 bucks on it would be enough. If you're being held by. Held up by a meth head, you'd be like, here, here, you can have it. You can have it. Like, and they're like, Sweet. 500 bucks. And you're like. And they might like pistol whip you, but they'll still leave with the 500 bucks probably. And so then you're like, well, what is the right amount on a decoy wallet? Is it 500 bucks? Or like, well, probably not. If it's going to be somebody smart, Smarter, is it 5,000 bucks? And then you start getting up to the point that like now you just have a serious sum and on a single sig in your house again. And so it's like if you decide the Safe number is 25,000 bucks, like now you just have 25,000 bucks sitting on a single sig, like, does that feel good, right? And then if it's a sophisticated thief, fairly sophisticated, then they understand multi sig and they understand having to go around. And if it's a highly sophisticated thief, like then that, right? So it's like you really have to. And so ultimately we determine that the only true solution, true solution to a wrench attack is insurance. Because even when you get to the point that you're like, look, because we've definitely had customers say that they have opted to use either multi institutional custody or a sole custodian and they're like, look, I know there's counterparty risk. I just don't, I just don't want the kidnapping risk in my home. Like, I don't want it there. And the problem with that is that it doesn't matter, right? Because if they, if they came knowing that you have bitcoin and you're like, I have zero keys, I can do nothing. They're like, you can make a phone call though, right? You can call your custodian and be like, boys, there's a gun to my head right now. I need you to send my bitcoin right now. Or they're going to shoot me. And they're going to be like, oh, we have, we have procedures. And you're like, no, for real, you have my permission. They are going to shoot me. Send the bitcoin, right? They're going to send the bitcoin, right? So like the insurance needs to be there whether whomever. Like if we're talking wrench attacks, like this is, this is a case where old school insurance serves a very important purpose.
- [69:53]
Unknown
So good old, good old fiat insurance, but now it's not fiat insurance, it's bitcoin insurance. So wait, can we talk about that though, please, please. So this is denominated in. The insurance policies are denominated in fiat. They are paid out in fiat as well.
- [70:10]
Becca
That's right.
- [70:10]
Unknown
Presumably. And I know you said they were new every year, like you need to, you get a New policy every year. So presumably the drift, I mean unless bitcoin, like you know, Omega candles a few times, like which, who knows. But like, hopefully the drift isn't too much. But can you talk about that like how that works right now? If there is significant drift from the fiat value of the policy versus the fiat value of the bitcoin, and then maybe we can get into kind of like how might that actually be able to change in the future with bitcoin denominated.
- [70:42]
Becca
So one thing to clarify about our current policy. So they're definitely denominated in dollars. So let's say let's just pretend Bitcoin is 100,000 now instead of 106. 1. But so if you have around 10 Bitcoin, you buy a million dollar policy for, for full coverage. But I first I want to just clarify, with Anchor Watch, you buy as much insurance as you want. So again, probably 90% of our customers are buying, maybe 85% are buying very close to one to one insurance. So that's part of the reason they came to us is they wanted insured. And maybe they're segregating their stacks. They have a non kyc stack, not with Anchor Watch, but then they're like super extra safe. If I cannot die and have this be lost and I want it protected from all the risks, that's their anchor watch stack. So but they don't have to. So if you had say 5 million and you're like, look, I love the inheritance protocol, the security model, the vault model, I love, I want enough insurance that I know that there would be a million. Like no matter what happens, no matter all the different scenarios. So if the wrench attack happens, like my family, like we will not have less than a million. Okay, so then that's totally fine. So they can use us for 5 million and the custody fee, which is 2 bips per month, 2 basis points or 0.02% that is on the vault value. Super competitive pricing on that. And then you buy as much insurance as you want. So if you want a million dollars, you buy a million dollars. If you want the full 5 million, you buy a full 5 million. And so that way like especially it's, it's totally a personal decision. If you're very cost conscious, then you can underinsure. And we don't require a lot of insurance, requires you to insure 80% of the value. We decided not to do that because we weren't trying to like force bitcoiners into it. We just, we want it there as an option. So you could do, you know, if you bought a 1 million policy on 5 million of insurance that's only 20% insured, but we allow that and you know, or you could buy 3 million or the full 5 million. So then the way the price action works is it really is you have bought a limit of value on your, on your insurance policy. So I always do use the Picasso as the best example. So let's say you buy a Picasso, it's a million dollars. That's what it was appraised at, that's what you paid for it. And you buy a million dollar insurance policy. But this year the art market is super hot and it's a one year policy. But like, you know, maybe you throw a lot of dinner parties and like people know that you have this Picasso in the house and like the art market in Picasso's had a really great year. And halfway through the year it's, it's a two and a half million dollar painting but you only paid for a million dollar insurance policy. You just call your insurance dude, that's it. Like you're just like, hey, art market been on fire this year I want to increase my limit on the Picasso to two and a half million. And they're like, okay, they send you an invoice for the prorated increase limit for the balance of the year and you just pay it. And now you have a two and a half million dollar policy. And so then when you get to the end of the year then, let's say now the prices have stabilized, then it would just be like, are we sticking there two and a half million? And you'd be like, yep, that's good for this coming year. And so the one year insurance policy, if we went shorter, what happens is like we have to have you sign the vault, right? So it's like we could do one month policies which allows you to really easily like each time we reprice the insurance to the value of your bitcoin. But it does mean you'd have to sign a transaction every month because we, you know, so there's downsides to doing that. So we thought annually was a good, just in terms of friction and that you have to go retrieve your keys. That was a good amount of time. And again, if you really feel uncomfortable becoming underinsured during a bull run year, you know, it's just a quick phone call, like a few minutes and you can just increase it.
- [75:04]
Unknown
Is there risk on the other side of that for you guys in like a bear market year? Bitcoin does a takes a 70% haircut. Like does how does that work out for you guys as the, you know, the ones offering these?
- [75:17]
Becca
Well, it does, it does mean that we expect to have less revenue and barriers.
- [75:26]
Unknown
Right.
- [75:28]
Becca
So we have set up, I mean how we hire, you know, we don't over hire during bull runs, you know, so we don't have to lay people off. So we, we just built a business that's able to withstand that and we plan our financials really conservatively to allow for that kind of fluctuation. But I mean it, you know, we're bitcoiners so you know, you zoom out and things are going up anyway. So like we're very pleased. I think on the overall trajectory of the business and, and despite those volatile years, we'll be able to weather that just fine.
- [76:05]
Unknown
And then can you talk about like, okay, so that's the current state of things. Is there a future where bitcoin denominated policies may be a reality and how far off is that future and is.
- [76:15]
Becca
That, is that better?
- [76:16]
Unknown
You know, because. Yeah, I would say it's a gut reaction but. But maybe not.
- [76:20]
Becca
Yeah, I think it depends on who you are. So yes, that will come. There's a few things that are holding back at least anchor watch from having started that way. So first off, insurance, like fiat the regulations. Bitcoin is not allowed as an admitted asset, meaning the insurance company who in our case Lloyds, but an insurance company that, that holds the capital in reserve, right. Has the fiat there to convince regulators that if our customers have a loss we will be able to afford to pay them out and uphold our financial obligations. So regulators end up determining what fractional amount because insurance is fractional. So what ratio of reserve to value insured they have to have based on the riskiness of the collection of policies. That pile of reserve, there's different ways to value it. So if it's cash, it's one to one, right. If it's dollars, you get a dollar of credit for every. If it's equities, there's a, there's, you get less credit. I don't remember the exact number. Maybe it's 70% or something like that. So they're allowed to invest the float, that's what that's called. But the more that it's not cash, the more that impairs them and the more that they have to put in there.
- [77:48]
Unknown
Right.
- [77:49]
Becca
And so regulators play a role in that. Bitcoin is currently a non admitted asset, which means they get zero credit. So if they put A million dollars of bitcoin in their reserve. The regulators view that as zero. And so for everybody dollar of bitcoin that they put in there, they also have to put a dollar of fiat just to like get credit for doing it. And so so far the insurance companies have not been interested to do that because it impairs their profitability like by 50%.
- [78:18]
Unknown
Right.
- [78:19]
Becca
So insurance is a capital market. They put their money where they're gonna, where they think they'll make money. It's, they're just bankers. And so if they're like, okay, we could do this bitcoin thing but it's going to cost us twice as much to do it. I'm just not going to do it. I'm going to give the dollars to this other interesting insurance startup doing wildfire focused coverage where at least like it's a, I know what I have to reserve. So that's one of the things that's holding back the industry. And so we're advocating. Yeah, yeah.
- [78:55]
Unknown
Just a quick question on that. So is that, I mean that sounds like the exact same situation as with SAB121.
- [79:00]
Becca
But it's very, very similar.
- [79:02]
Unknown
But it's just, but it's not controlled like the insurance industry.
- [79:06]
Becca
It's a different set of regards to.
- [79:07]
Unknown
Separate from the banking industry in that regard. Okay, yes, but it's basically, it's the exact same premise.
- [79:12]
Becca
Exactly. Yes. So we're advocating, you know, we're doing what we can to try to change that. The difference is that insurance is regulated at the state level. So you would have to convince all the states. But then the states look to the national association of Insurance Commissioners for guidance. And then so it's like currently the NAIC is not even considering changing the status of Bitcoin. And so it's like, how do we get them to consider at least. And you know, maybe that's through the state. So if enough states are going to the, to the NAIC and saying like, hey, like why can't we do this? Or why isn't this part of your guidance? But it's just, it's a long road.
- [79:58]
Unknown
Right.
- [79:59]
Becca
So at the moment a lot of people, a lot of companies were advocating for sob121.
- [80:06]
Unknown
Right.
- [80:07]
Becca
There's not that many advocating for a change in insurance.
- [80:11]
Unknown
Right.
- [80:11]
Becca
So we're doing our part. We're, we're. So then is it better? It's better for some things. I mean it's better that you don't have to do that math every year. So now what it means is that you have to pay your premiums in bitcoin. So that may have implications for some people that you would have to think, I mean, it's better in that, you know, if you're. Forget the world on a bitcoin standard, that's, I'm not even gonna like address that. That's not gonna be the next five years that I'm focused on, right? But like, let's say you operate on a bitcoin standard, or at least that's how you approach value, you know, then a bitcoin denominated policy is going to be great because you know, you paid in the amount of sats you paid in and you know that if you have a loss, what you're going to get back out. And if you're super bullish, that's exciting. Who it can be worse for is, you know, people who don't want to sell their bitcoin to pay their insurance premium, they still have a job, right? And so there comes a point that I think people could say, look, as the value goes up and I'm becoming like crazy wealthy, do I want to insure all of it or am I going to insure a portion of it? Because until the world is on a bitcoin standard, even a whale. Well, actually anybody, but especially a company, if you're thinking about a company trying to, like, their books are still in dollars and they need a predictable expense on insurance, right? And so let's say, you know, when you bought the insurance policy to cover the business treasury, let's say the cost of that policy was, you know, it's a company. Let's say it's a good chunk of bitcoin. You know, the cost of the policy was $80,000, okay? They're like, cool. Annual insurance expense on our Bitcoin, $80,000 the next year. You know, if they want the same amount of insurance, like, you know, maybe the rates change slightly, but then next year they're like $83,000. Predictable. Good. And that's what it cost them. When you start paying in SATs, then you're like, well, let's even talk about as a pleb, right? So let's say you paid your for your insurance policy and in SATs, but the dollar equivalent was 5,000. And you're like, okay, that's fine. Halfway through the year, bitcoin in a bull year did a 10X, right? You already paid the SATs, but now you're looking at it and you're like, I paid 50 grand of insurance this year. Was that my intention. And maybe it was, right, like, maybe you're like, yeah, I get that. I understand math. Like, I get that. But maybe you're like, actually, no, I didn't want to lock up 50 grand worth of satoshis for my family's insurance budget this year. Like, maybe.
- [83:26]
Unknown
Right.
- [83:27]
Becca
So it's a personal decision.
- [83:29]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [83:30]
Becca
So I think even when we start offering it, and there's ways to offer it without it being an admitted asset. So we can do it offshore. We could do it in Bermuda. We have a Bermuda entity. And the difference though is that it will not be underwritten by Lloyds of London. So because they are an admitted carrier and they're going to fall, they're the ones who will. So any legacy insurer, fiat insurer, is going to care about, about this admitted asset. If we did it out of Bermuda, what we would do is we would raise the bitcoin and then we would actually just be backing it ourselves.
- [84:10]
Unknown
Right.
- [84:10]
Becca
So instead of Lloyd's being on the hook financially, Anchor Watch would be on the hook financially. How can we do that? Even though we're a small company? We did it by raising the bitcoin. So I would go out to the industry and this will happen, by the way. Like, this is the plan. It's no secret. And the bitcoin, treasury companies are like, ready, like, getting the bitcoin. Because it's interesting.
- [84:33]
Unknown
Yeah, yeah.
- [84:33]
Becca
So it gets really interesting and exciting for me. Like, this is one of the reasons we built this company, is to build towards this vision. So what would happen is I would say, okay, treasury companies, okay, microstrategy, okay, others who have a lot of bitcoin, I now need a lot of Bitcoin and it's going to underwrite insurance risk. It's not going to be rehypothecated. It's just going to sit there in reserve. It's ensuring custody. The custody is very secure. It's safe. It's not risk free.
- [85:08]
Unknown
Right.
- [85:08]
Becca
These various perils still happen, but it is safe risk.
- [85:15]
Unknown
Right.
- [85:15]
Becca
It's predictable risk, unlike rehypothecation risk, which is the main way that people lend out Bitcoin right now. So if, if you're lending out one bitcoin and getting back more than one bitcoin, generally the way that's happening is it's being traded right out the back and then they're making more money trading other assets or, or doing option strategy or whatever they're doing, hoping that it doesn't blow up and then they're giving you back A percent. They're like, okay, thanks for letting us borrow that Bitcoin. Here's 1.025 Bitcoin. And so you made 2.5%. Hope they didn't lose it in the interim, right? For two and a half percent yield. So with insurance risk, we'd be able to say like, hey, what if we could give you better returns but lower risk because we're not trading out the back. You know exactly where it's going. Here's our loss history, here's how it's being held, and we'll give you X percent yield for lending us the Bitcoin to sit in that reserve pool. And that'll be super exciting because all of a sudden there's a new yield opportunity. And so then when Alan Farrington is like, where's where the yield come from? We're like, we'll tell you exactly where the yield came from. It came from insurance premiums, right? Like, like, it's no mystery. It's not shady, it's not rehypothecated. It's not confusing. We charge insurance premiums and we take a portion of those premiums and, and we pay investors to give us reserves. And so it'll be really fun when we do flip the switch because it means that anchor watch now all of a sudden is the arbiter of yield, right? There's this misconception that whoever has the most bitcoin gets to be the reinsurer of the world, right? The Berkshire of bitcoin. I'm like, no, I actually can take the bitcoin from who I want to work with, right? Like, I, I'm the one who developed the insurance product. I'm the one that's selling the insurance product. I'm the one that's raising the insurance link security. I, I can choose who gets to put that Bitcoin in the reserve pool. So of course the terms are going to matter, right? So who's giving me, who's charging me the least, who's, who's willing to take the lowest yield, maybe the most favorable duration? So the terms are going to matter, but also who do, who do I like, work working with, who is high trust, like who's a high integrity company or individual. And you know, like, we're also going to diversify the risk in that, right? So it won't just be one entity. We'll, we'll take it from multiple entities so that even the reserve pool is, is diversified, but it's very doable. The other reason that, so we didn't do that initially for a couple of reasons. One, because it was very clear in talking to the market that the Lloyd's of London name is super important. Like having an A plus rated carrier actually underwriting this risk is very, very important. And since we're a small startup, you know, Rob and myself have a good reputation, are well known in our little, our little circle, but once you start getting out to commercial and all these new treasury companies and stuff, they don't know who we are.
- [88:40]
Unknown
Right.
- [88:41]
Becca
And the idea of like putting all your trust in a startup that, I mean, even if you do know who we are, like you still, like, you still want the A plus rating of like a very well known insurer. So we thought it was much better to start building this market on an A rated carrier with a lot of trust where you can feel absolutely confident that you will be paid out and if you have a loss and over time, like our reputation and comfort level will be building with that. So by the time we flip and now we utilize our Bermuda carrier and we ourselves are kind of the guarantee that we have built enough trust that customers are like, yeah, I get it, like, that's fine, I feel confident. And we'll probably run them both, right, because there's still this predictability of expenses and I suspect a lot of commercial businesses will prefer the fiat, the fiat denomination. People who think more on a bitcoin standard will prefer the bitcoin denominator and we'll do both. The last reason that we're holding off is because in order to pay the yield, there needs to be sufficient volume.
- [90:02]
Unknown
Right.
- [90:02]
Becca
So we, so if, if there's not enough premium being generated by selling insurance, then I don't have any, they're not going to make any money.
- [90:11]
Unknown
Right.
- [90:12]
Becca
And so we're, we're taking a couple years to build the market. We're developing insurance products, we're selling them and we're building that volume so that we'll, we'll judge the right time to make that, that switch or to start offering that and it'll come not, not too far off. But that's, that's the strategy.
- [90:30]
Unknown
It's super interesting on the bitcoin treasury company side, just in terms of like, obviously they're going to want something to do with all of that bitcoin they're accumulating.
- [90:38]
Becca
Yeah, yeah.
- [90:39]
Unknown
And you know, I'm also, I'm going to have to clip out that part about Alan Farrington because, you know, I think, I think he's going to love it and I'm sure he'll have some very Alan esque questions about that said yield, but I love it. One other thing we didn't get a chance to talk about yet and I want to be conscious of your time here but if you have a couple more minutes. We didn't get a chance to touch on the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the being ordered to consider. Ordered to consider crypto, not just bitcoin, let's, let's be clear. But all of crypto as an asset when buying mortgages. Thoughts on that? I mean kind of a massive shift.
- [91:15]
Becca
Yeah, I mean I think it's great for bitcoiners like the, the details of it. Like I think there's, we can make some improvements. But yeah, the conc. That they put out guidance, a letter so it's only guidance, it's not a strict rule. But saying that you can consider crypto as, as part of a prospective insurance mortgage customer as part of their assets to determine, you know, how much of a mortgage you're going to give. Now that's huge.
- [91:46]
Unknown
Right?
- [91:46]
Becca
Because a lot of people who, especially if their wealth is entirely in bitcoin, maybe they've stopped a fiat job or their wealth is way bigger than their fiat job. Like maybe they're, you know, they're making what they make and they're still working but their W2 income only gives them access to a mortgage this size. They might have all this bitcoin and like they couldn't, it wasn't doing anything for them. So they were actually held out of mortgages. And so a lot of wealthy bitcoiners, the only way they can buy homes is to sell bitcoin and sell it and pay in cash. And so this is a huge change. It's super beneficial. I was super excited about it on a personal level and for Anchor Watch as well. So the part on the details that I think still has opportunity is that it says that it needs to be held at a centralized exchange. That that was the wording and the guidance. So like you can consider crypto as an asset as long as it's held at a regulated exchange, regulated centralized exchange. And my opinion on that is more or less that politely I say they have a developing understanding of the options to hold bitcoin and do so in a way that gives the bank the assurances they need. So I mean one reason I say it that way, that I think it's a developing understanding is it's a strange thing to say, exchange versus even a custodian.
- [93:21]
Unknown
Right.
- [93:22]
Becca
Like you could at least say like if it needs to be at a centralized exchange or custodian because there are definitely reputable custodians who are not also exchanges.
- [93:32]
Unknown
Right.
- [93:34]
Becca
And at least there you see where they're getting at. You're, they're saying, what they're saying is the same thing that insurers said to us, which is, hey, we're willing to, we're willing to do this if we feel confident that you, an institution are also participating in this custody. And as long as that, then we'll do the insurance if it's the customer only. We're just not comfortable yet. Maybe in the future, but not yet. And so I view this letter as kind of being the same thing where they're saying, look, we'll, we'll view it as collateral, but we just not if the customer is holding themselves, we don't understand that well enough. Like it needs to be like at a company that we can go audit and like things like that. So exchange or custodian would make more sense, at least for their purposes. What we are already working to insure private loans already. So we have customers who had made an arrangement, say with their local bank and the bank agreed to give them a bitcoin backed loan as long as it was insured. And so we were able to go on a one by one basis and work with that client and their bank and ultimately show them how the custody works. You know, in some case the bank is holding keys themselves.
- [94:54]
Unknown
Right?
- [94:55]
Becca
Yep. Yeah. And you know, we've been able to demonstrate that with the bank and put insurance on it. And that was one of the early things. Theses of Anchor Watch too is like, okay, in the future we think this is going to happen. So it's fun when it's a good feeling to have skated to where the puck is headed.
- [95:16]
Unknown
Right.
- [95:16]
Nice to be right.
- [95:18]
Becca
It is, it's very satisfying. And I think the bitcoin yield, insurance yield is our other main thesis and both of them are coming together nicely. But you know, so we always said that look, a bank will let you mortgage a house, but they will not let you take ownership of that house until there's insurance on it. Not even for a day. It's a thing that you have to do at closing.
- [95:42]
Unknown
Right.
- [95:43]
Becca
To show that it has insurance. And so we just figured that when banks finally do get into providing loans, they will want insurance on it and we're going to make it available. And so on these private loans that we've done, that was very much that came to pass where the banks are like, all right, we'll do it. But like, I don't get it. And so I need to know that it's insured. Cool. So in terms of the Freddie Mae, Freddie Fannie guidance, we are kind of dual pathing how we approach it. So on one side we're just saying, look, the spirit of the letter. With the spirit of the letter, we already provide what the bank needs and we have existing loans that prove that banks are willing to do it, which is saying, look, we have proof of assets. You can pull it as often as you want. The customer, while insured, can't move it unilaterally. So they can't rug the bank and just remove the assets because Anchor Watch has to sign. And like at the beginning of the show, I described the proof of assets that you can request at any time if the customer wants or the bank wants. We can do that ourselves. Certify it like, sign it and seal it, send it certified mail. We could do that monthly. You know, whatever, whatever the bank needs. We say like, look, the spirit of the letter, we already fully are giving you what you need. And so I think then that's up to a given bank officer.
- [97:18]
Unknown
Right.
- [97:19]
Becca
Because again, it's guidance only. So it's up to a specific loan officer if they're comfortable with that. And we're just doing our best to provide everything that's possible to make them feel comfortable. At the same time, we're also just going to meet the letter of the non law as well. And so we'll just become an exchange.
- [97:40]
Unknown
Oh, okay. So two prong approach. I like it.
- [97:44]
Becca
It. Yeah, it's huge though. It's huge. It's really good for bitcoiners. Really good.
- [97:49]
Unknown
It's, it's great to see because it's like bitcoiners, like a lot of them, especially if they've, you know, they've been around for a while. Like, I haven't been around that long, but like folks that have been around even longer, it's like they may have accumulated a lot of bitcoin that has a very high fiat value, but it's like somewhat trapped. And they either sell off some and pay a bunch of capital gains tax.
- [98:06]
Exactly.
- [98:07]
Which is like, okay, you're getting like kicked twice, you know, but now it's like there's a, there's another solution to that and you can actually, like as it should be, like, this is money. This is the best asset that's out there in the world. It's finally starting to be recognized as such. Like, I'M I'm not sure if I were a loan officer, which I'm not, if I'd be like, yeah, no, we'll definitely take that, that Solana you have and we'll, we'll like give you a loan against that. Like that might be a little bit shakier, but, but bitcoin, that's a, that's a different animal.
- [98:36]
Becca
Yeah. Well, especially a mortgage is a long term loan. And so I mean if a lot of the bitcoin backed loans that you can get are really short term, right. So it's like, it really is in a way. It's almost like a trading strategy kind of.
- [98:51]
Unknown
Right.
- [98:51]
Becca
So it's like based. If it's only a one year loan, like you're like, all right, the rates are really high on Those, maybe it's 10%, but if I do it now, I will more than have saved that 10%. But so like the current bitcoin backed loan environment is a short term one. And so in that case like maybe, maybe a bank wouldn't look at it that differently from an altcoin because it's short duration, but when you are talking about a mortgage, you know, it's long duration. And there's obviously like Bitcoin has proven how it behaves in the long run. It's volatile in a given year, but it's not volatile when you zoom all the way out. And that should give banks a lot of peace of mind. And you know, there's companies doing really interesting blended things already, right. Like battery finance does, you know, commercial loans blended with Bitcoin and has very straightforward but clever ways of sharing in that upside with, with the borrowers. So I mean there's a lot of things happening in the space to kind of, of bring together the fiat world, but start integrating bitcoin into it in a way that I just, I just think is good for bitcoiners because we, we live in a blended world already.
- [100:14]
Unknown
Right.
- [100:14]
Becca
Like there's a few people who are, who are living that bitcoin life purely. But for the most of us we're, we're living in both worlds at the same time. And so I think step one or step, wherever we are right now is, is like better integration of these and then like over time then you know, the, the global recognition of bitcoin continues to grow and, and become stronger and, and you know, today it might be like the blend, whether it's battery finance or you know, an individual talking to their bank and what the bank is willing to recognize, you know, it might be fiat and bitcoin and they're like, okay, we're willing to let you integrate this much bitcoin into our consideration. Over time, you know, these might switch.
- [101:05]
Unknown
Right.
- [101:05]
Becca
And then, you know, maybe eventually we get to a bitcoin standard. But, you know, for now we're here and, and I think it's a great start. I think it's good for all of us.
- [101:16]
Unknown
So I say amen to that. Well, Becca, it's, it's been a, been a treat. We covered a lot of ground. Was there anything we did not get a chance to cover or did we do a pretty good job?
- [101:29]
Becca
I mean, I think we, I think what we're, I think we did great.
- [101:33]
Unknown
I think so too. But yeah, I just wanted to get your opinion.
- [101:35]
Becca
No, no, no, happy to, I mean, happy to share if people want to get in touch if that's. Please do share.
- [101:41]
Unknown
Send people wherever you want.
- [101:42]
Becca
Yep. So I mean, we have anchorwatch.com and we have the Anchor Watch handle on X on Twitter. Anybody can email me directly. Becca, Anchor watch. Or if you're just looking to open a policy or get some more information, you can email me and I'll pass you to the right team or email agentchorwatch.com and that'll be the fastest way. The process, super straightforward. Generally we'd get on a call and we'll walk through the custody model, answer any questions that you have, whether it's the custody or the insurance policy, whatever it covers, exclusions, things like that. And generally within a 30 minute call we can get through all that as well as get you an accurate quote. So we, we have a few questions. You have some choices between, like, do you want that HODL discount?
- [102:32]
Unknown
Right.
- [102:33]
Becca
Are you intending to spend this bitcoin this year? If not, sign up for the HODL discount. Save a bunch of money, you know. So we'll ask you a few questions. It takes about five minutes and based on how you want to organize your, your security, we can give you an accurate rate quote there on the call. And then if you're happy with it, you want to move forward, you would just fill out an insurance application. It's very, it's 15 minutes. It's just a standard insurance application. Do that online and we will send you a welcome kit with factory sealed signing devices. And the final step would be an onboarding call. We walk you through setting up your private keys and getting your devices set up. We give you a tour of the platform. We do a test transaction. Once the vault is created, make sure that we can send and receive, and everybody feels comfortable. And at that point, we'll bind the insurance policy. And then you have an empty but insured vault. And at any point, you can then send your bitcoin into the insured vault. And so that's kind of the onboarding process for us.
- [103:35]
Unknown
And then the only other step is you need to get, like, you know, secured with adt, but, like, you need. You need your anchor watch thing to slap on the outside of people's houses.
- [103:43]
Becca
Listen, if people want to decal, I will make decals. I love making swag. My. My first 10 years working were as a apparel merchant. I was like a buyer, fashion buyer. So our swag is top notch. If people want a decal, I will make them a decal.
- [103:59]
Unknown
I can attest to the top notch swag. Y' all were giving out anchor watch wrenches at the bitcoin conference in Vegas, which was amazing. You know, it's funny, security at the airport did not like Carla having that when she brought it back through, but we made it. We were able to keep it, which was good. They're like a wrench in your bag.
- [104:18]
Becca
I'm glad. What I found out is, look, I've been carrying these around for like, a year and a half and giving them out. I've never had a problem. But at Vegas specifically, which is terrible timing because we gave out 700 of these things, multiple people at the Vegas airport did get stopped at security, and they're like, is this a wrench? And they literally, like, measure it. And apparently you're not supposed to have tools that are longer than six inches. And this, obviously is 6.15 inches.
- [104:50]
Unknown
Wait, is it really?
- [104:52]
Becca
I think it's six and a half, but okay. And so technically, this is not supposed to go through tsa, which is very frustrating because we have a lot of them, but we'll keep giving them out. They're very popular.
- [105:05]
Unknown
Yeah, we had a good TSA agent that day, I guess.
- [105:08]
Becca
Yeah.
- [105:09]
Unknown
Well, Becca, thanks so much. Appreciate you sharing your time. Love what you guys are building and looking forward to seeing what's coming down the pipe for you guys too.
- [105:17]
Becca
Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I had a great time.
- [105:20]
Unknown
Anytime.
- [105:21]
All right.
- [105:22]
All right.
- [105:30]
Walker
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening, and share it with your friends, family, and strangers on the Internet. Find Beyond Noster@primal.net Walker and this podcast at primal.netcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at tcoin Podcast. Head in the show notes to grab sponsor links. Head to substack.com walker America to get episodes emailed to you. And head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.