THE Bitcoin Podcast

Episode: From Coffeehouses to Cyberspace: How Bitcoin Fixes Insurance | Guest: Aaron Daniel

Host: Walker America
Date: September 17, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Walker America sits down with Aaron Daniel—an appellate attorney and co-founder of Resolver, a Bitcoin-native insurance technology company. They dive into the revolutionary intersection of Bitcoin, property rights, and insurance, explore how open-source principles can reshape the justice system and insurance markets, and walk through the rich historical connection between insurance, coffeehouses, and financial innovation. The discussion ranges from the consumer’s experience and rationale for Bitcoin-denominated insurance to broader societal questions about privacy, technology, and the future of institutions in a Bitcoin world.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bitcoin as the Ultimate Property Right

• Bitcoin's Legal Significance
  • Aaron frames Bitcoin as the "end all, be all right now of property rights"—an immutable digital asset that doesn't require a court for enforcement ([00:00], [06:54]).

    "There is nothing stronger than Bitcoin when it comes to preserving. Like that's, that's just it. Like it's the, it's the end all be all right now of property rights. Like you don't need a court to enforce it necessarily." — Aaron Daniel [06:54]

• Societal Implications
  • The conversation explores how law and institutions may need to change to accommodate this new form of property right.

2. The Journey from Legal Practice to Bitcoin Insurance

• Aaron's Background
  • Discovered Bitcoin in 2020; background as an appellate attorney.
  • Shifted focus after reading Lyn Alden’s takedown of Ethereum, becoming a Bitcoin maximalist ([04:55]).
  • Encountered the Bitcoin builder community on Nostr and pursued ideas combining justice, dispute resolution, and open-source technologies.
• Formation of Resolver
  • Co-founded Resolver after collaboration sparked by Bitcoin community engagement and hackathons ([07:27]–[11:30]).

3. Resolver & The BDIC (Bitcoin Denominated Insurance Collaborative)

• Resolver’s Role
  • Resolver is an insurance technology provider, not an insurance company or broker ([12:37]).
  • Their first product, BDIC, is described as an "FDIC for Bitcoin": a marketplace connecting insurance providers to users, prioritizing policies denominated in SATs ([13:31]).

    "BDIC is bitcoin denominated insurance collaborative. So we are prioritizing insurance policies that are denominated in SATs." — Aaron Daniel [13:37]

• How BDIC Works
  • Embedded within Bitcoin custody and wallet solutions; facilitates easy policy purchase like travel insurance during checkout ([13:31]–[13:37]).
  • Notably, BDIC aims to be open, private, and not mandated or regulated like traditional insurance mandates.

4. Why Bitcoin-Denominated Insurance?

• Matching Risk and Liability
  • Insurers can match assets and liabilities, avoiding fiat mismatch and regulatory bottlenecks ([18:13]):

    "The risk of lost Bitcoin. You've got to pay out a bitcoin amount and you're backing it with fiat. That's scary. That's why they basically don't exist." — Aaron Daniel [18:22]

• User Experience
  • Challenges for users who want Bitcoin protection but prefer to pay premiums in fiat, to avoid depleting Bitcoin holdings ([20:10]).
  • Resolver’s platform enables real-time payment and currency conversion without slippage, offering flexibility ([20:17]–[22:56]).

    "Our platform, when you go to pay, you can pay with dollars if you'd like and have that transmitted over the Bitcoin blockchain or Lightning network and pegged out to the various parties in any currency." — Aaron Daniel [20:51]

5. Market Rollout & Adoption

• Go-to-Market Timeline
  • BDIC is in active development; targeting both retail and enterprise clients, with partnerships with wallet providers like Liana ([25:02]).
• Target Demographics & Use Cases
  • Focus on collaborative custody and self-custody as entry points.
  • Potential for exchange partnerships and eventual expansion to banks, as US and global regulations evolve ([28:03]):

    "Banks are going to offer insurance, right? ... Banks are going to start custodying insurance or bitcoin." — Aaron Daniel [28:03]

• Endgame Vision
  • In five years, expects banks to offer default Bitcoin insurance, especially as regulators provide guidance ([28:03]–[30:13]).

6. Incentive Alignment & Education

• Insurance as a Force for Safety
  • Insurance as a voluntary, incentive-driven market force that develops best practices in absence of (or prior to) regulation (e.g., fire codes, Underwriter’s Labs) ([33:41]–[35:09]).

    "Insurance is a great example ... over time they helped develop the best practices for buildings." — Aaron Daniel [34:49]

• Reducing Risk via Education
  • Platforms bundled with insurance can incentivize better user security (e.g., discounts for following best practices) ([31:56]).

7. Philosophical & Historical Context: Coffeehouses and Insurance

• Coffeehouses as Financial Incubators
  • Lloyd’s of London and the London Stock Exchange both grew out of English coffeehouses that fueled commerce, collaboration, and innovation ([39:00]–[45:33]).

    "I like to say that insurance was like birthed from, through coffee ... there was one that was called, you know, Lloyd's Coffee House. So that eventually became Lloyd's of London ... that created like this virtuous cycle again where you now you had this diffusion of risk, this risk transfer right in the marketplace that allowed more risk taking to happen, right? And better voyages and more progress, right? And more commerce. So I just love that story because I think in my mind, bitcoin can be this stimulant like coffee to commerce." — Aaron Daniel [39:00–42:00]

• Bitcoin as the New Stimulant
  • Bitcoin is described as the “stimulant” for digital commerce, enabling borderless, rapid settlement compared to slow, legacy financial systems ([42:00]).

8. Industry Evolution: Adoption Curve & Bitcoin Treasury Companies

• Adoption Stage
  • The insurance sector is shifting from innovators to early adopters, with Bitcoin’s market cap and network liquidity now sufficient for enterprise-scale transactions ([46:44]–[47:20]).
• Role of Challengers vs. Incumbents
  • Traditional insurance “challengers” and Bitcoin-native companies could drive forward new models and unlock new premium flows ([47:20]–[53:02]).
• Bitcoin as Yield Opportunity
  • Large treasury companies may pursue Bitcoin-denominated insurance to generate yield ([50:37]), and there's a “floodgate” potential for capital backing.

9. Open Source, Justice & Forensic Evidence

• Freedom Tech Legal Advocacy
  • Aaron’s legal background and current advocacy tie into privacy rights and resisting fiat-driven perversions of the justice system.
• Roman Sterlingov and Bitcoin Fog Case
  • Details on defending Roman Sterlingov, accused (on weak, black-box forensic evidence) of running the custodial Bitcoin mixer Bitcoin Fog ([58:50]–[66:18]).

    "There is no testing, no peer reviewed testing on [Chainalysis]. It's black box software. No one can see the code ... and at the end of the day there's nowhere no real way to verify it." — Aaron Daniel [61:15]

• Broader Threat of Closed-Source Tools
  • Critique of proprietary, unverified software in law enforcement (from blockchain analytics to “ShotSpotter” gunshot sensors to probabilistic DNA testing) ([66:18]–[70:32]).
  • Advocacy for open-source forensic tools, transparency, and legal rights ([70:32]–[71:58]):

    "It seems like the only way you can possibly have any sort of trust in a justice system is if it is transparent. And so if you are using technological tools that obfuscate that process, you cannot possibly have faith in that. Justice is being done fairly." — Co-host [70:56]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Bitcoin's Legal Revolution:
  "There is nothing stronger than Bitcoin when it comes to preserving ... the end all be all right now of property rights. You don't need a court to enforce it necessarily."
  — Aaron Daniel ([06:54])

• On Insurance’s Market Roots:
  "BDIC is totally private. It's totally free and open to anybody to join it. Just like Bitcoin, right? It's not mandated by the government."
  — Aaron Daniel ([01:10]; [33:17])

• On Core Problem with Fiat-Backed Policies:
  "The risk of lost Bitcoin. You've got to pay out a bitcoin amount and you're backing it with fiat. That's scary. That's why they basically don't exist."
  — Aaron Daniel ([18:22])

• On Payment Settlement Innovation:
  "If you just put that on Bitcoin now and use bitcoin as the rails to settle—like boom, your efficiencies as an industry have just gone down."
  — Aaron Daniel ([42:00])

• On Risk Aversion and New Opportunities:
  "Insurance companies, while they are conservative, right, they want to find new risk that doesn't exist on the market that's not saturated yet, right? And they want to be the first movers, a lot of them do, into these emerging risks. And so bitcoin offers that opportunity."
  — Aaron Daniel ([47:20])

• On Open Source in Justice:
  "It seems like the only way you can possibly have any sort of trust in a justice system is if it is transparent. And so if you are using technological tools that obfuscate that process, you cannot possibly have faith in that justice is being done fairly."
  — Co-host ([70:56])

Important Timestamps

• [00:00]–[01:10] — Aaron sets the stage: Bitcoin as property rights revolution & relation to insurance.
• [04:55]–[07:27] — Aaron's entry into Bitcoin, legal perspective, early writing, and discovery of Nostr.
• [11:48]–[13:37] — How Resolver and BDIC fit into the insurance and Bitcoin ecosystem.
• [17:46]–[22:56] — Why Bitcoin-denominated insurance makes sense & Resolver’s real-time payment innovations.
• [28:03]–[32:08] — How banks, regulation, and large financial institutions will eventually adopt Bitcoin insurance.
• [33:41]–[35:09] — Market-driven safety improvements: insurance’s positive role throughout history.
• [38:44]–[45:33] — Coffeehouses, Lloyd’s, and the birth of financial risk management; linking historical parallels with Bitcoin.
• [46:44]–[53:02] — Adoption curve, “challenger” insurance companies, and Bitcoin treasury as insurance capital.
• [58:50]–[66:18] — Legal activism: defense of Roman Sterlingov and the danger of closed-source forensic software.
• [70:32]–[72:13] — The case for open-source transparency in justice and forensics.

Tone & Concluding Thoughts

The episode maintains a thoughtful, ambitious, and at times philosophical tone. Aaron and Walker blend deep technical and legal insight with practical advice and historical storytelling. The mood is optimistic but grounded—a belief that Bitcoin, open-source principles, and market incentives can fix broken systems, including insurance and justice, provided that communities and innovators remain vigilant and collaborative. The conversation concludes with a call to pursue transparency, advocate for sound incentives, and create resilient, user-centric systems for a Bitcoin-powered future.

For more updates on Resolver and BDIC:

• Visit: resolver.io
• Connect with Aaron on Nostr and X (links in show notes)
• Follow THE Bitcoin Podcast for future episodes on the evolution of Bitcoin in commerce, law, and beyond.