Hey, hey, welcome to the Bitcoin Matrix. I'm your host, Cedric Youngelman. The Bitcoin Matrix is a
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We have big news. The fourth annual Bitcoin Day Naples is officially moving to the brand new
Naples Beach Club, a four seasons resort on Saturday, January 17th, 2026. This isn't just
a change in venue. It's a full elevation. The resort literally just opened its doors with stunning
oceanfront gathering spaces, five-star service, and the kind of polished yet relaxed vibe that
makes a Bitcoin conference feel like the premium experience it should be. We're expecting 250-plus
builders, investors, and serious Bitcoiners in the room, plus a high-quality live stream reaching
thousands more. The speaker lineup is coming together fast, including Natalie Brunel, Larry
Lepard, myself, and many more. And the entire day will be packed with signal, no fluff, just the
conversations and connections that move the space forward. And new this year, the night before the
conference, Friday, January 16th, Bitcoin Day is hosting an intimate carnivore dinner with Dr.
Sean Baker. Picture massive grass-fed steaks from a local Florida ranch, cooked over open fire by a
renowned Native American chef at an exclusive private residence. Limited seats, unforgettable
night, perfect way to kick off the weekend with fellow Bitcoiners who care about health,
sovereignty and great food. Grab your ticket at bitcoinday.io and use the code matrix for 10%
off any Bitcoin Day ticket type, including the carnivore dinner. The Bitcoin Matrix podcast
officially partnered with CrowdHealth, but I also joined as a member. With CrowdHealth,
it's not just about profits. It's about people. You get a team that helps negotiate your bills,
access to low cost prescriptions and lab tests, and a list of doctors who don't treat you like a
number. And if something major happens, you cover the first $500. Then the crowd steps in to help
share the rest. It feels real. It feels like taking care of your health the way it should be.
Simple, direct, and human. Thousands of members already say CrowdHealth saved them tens of
thousands of dollars over traditional insurance. And with many subsidy programs ending and costs
rising, there's never been a more important time to take charge of your health care. If you're
ready to join a community that looks out for you, give CrowdHealth a try. This open enrollment,
take your power back. Join CrowdHealth to get started today for $99 for your first three months
using code MATRIX at joincrowdhealth.com. CrowdHealth is not insurance. Opt out. Take your
power back. This is how we win. Joincrowdhealth.com. Use code MATRIX. A couple of months ago, I
officially partnered with MicroSeed because this is the best damn seed storage hardware I've seen
in eight plus years of being in this space.
They supply titanium, stainless steel, and nylon washers.
Imagine storing your seed phrase on nylon short-term
to get through body scanners, x-rays, and metal detectors.
Imagine stamping the words,
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Discreet, resilient seed security made simple.
Use the code MATRIX for a discount at microc.io.
In this episode, I chat with Jason Leibowitz, head of strategy at Meanwhile,
about a game-changing financial product that blends Bitcoin with the powerful concept of infinite banking.
Jason takes us on a journey through how Bitcoin-denominated whole life insurance works
and why it might be the smartest way for Bitcoiners to unlock liquidity,
plan for the future, and ensure their wealth outlives them.
He also breaks down the mechanics of policy loans, estate planning, and why traditional
life insurance fails in a fiat-debased world.
Whether you're thinking about passing your Bitcoin onto your family, protecting your
wealth from future uncertainty, or simply want more control over your financial life,
this conversation is a must-listen.
Please subscribe, like, and share the Bitcoin Matrix podcast with your friends and family.
And now, let's enter the Bitcoin Matrix podcast with Jason Leibowitz from Bitcoin-denominated life insurance company Meanwhile.
What is real? How do you define real?
You can't jump into cash.
Cash is trash.
What do you do? You get out.
Meanwhile, is refining insurance for the Bitcoin age.
Jason, welcome to the Bitcoin Matrix podcast.
How are you?
Great to be here.
I'm wonderful.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm super excited to get into this.
What is your background before even Bitcoin?
A long background of a few different things.
I mean, when I graduated college, it was 2008 with the eyes set on going to Wall Street.
I was a finance major in 08, the financial crisis, perfect timing for someone to go on
Wall Street.
But I joined a hedge fund.
I joined a bank.
I sold fixed income interest rates, securities, mainly the hedge funds, until I discovered
Bitcoin in 2013.
And that changed everything for me.
And it was actually an interesting time because I was working with some very smart people
around me.
and one of my clients, this was like Q3, Q4 of 2013.
I get on the phone with him, 7 a.m. one day,
and he tells me this interesting story.
He said, and this guy, mind you, very, very, very smart.
And he tells me, I was at this event last night.
He was at this cocktail hour, and he basically told me,
he was the dumbest guy in the room.
Everyone was talking about Bitcoin.
He had no idea what it was.
It was his first time hearing about it.
But he was convinced that these are very smart people and they're about to introduce this Bitcoin thing to Wall Street.
And therefore, it was probably going up in price, whatever it was.
He said, if you're interested, do some digging.
I don't know what else to say.
And I did.
And I started looking into this Bitcoin thing, found the white paper, read it many times, found a lot of other blogs.
And there wasn't a lot back then.
There were very few places to get to read and get community notes and input and resources about Bitcoin.
But I realized that whatever it was, I sort of the light bulb went off this idea of digital money that you can attach to an email, so to speak, to use an analogy, the way you can attach photos or videos and text to emails, send it instantly anywhere in the world for free.
To be able to do that with money was a valuable introduction or evolution of the Internet.
And it made all the sense in the world.
And my other set of thinking was that this was the age that things were starting to go viral, like videos, stuff like that.
And when things went viral, I mean, it went quick around the world on the Internet.
So I thought this Bitcoin thing could go viral because it's digital money.
And so it can move fast.
And I quickly learned that it was a highly convex asset with asymmetric upside, given its scarcity.
And I bought some on Coinbase, which was the only place I could figure out where to buy Bitcoin.
and I custodyed a BitGo.
I don't remember how I knew enough at the time
to never keep your crypto on exchange, but I did.
So I got a BitGo wallet,
and I would buy a Coinbase, move it to BitGo,
200 bucks, 300 bucks,
and then quickly, before I even knew it,
Bitcoin was at $1,200.
It's like, oh my gosh, what is this thing?
It is moving.
And then it crashed to 200 bucks again
a couple months later,
and I was just totally hooked.
I was telling anyone who is willing to listen
that this was a really interesting,
potentially new asset class
that was nascent in the first inning of its life.
And everyone on the Wall Street trading floor
was like, you are cuckoo.
You are pitching a pyramid scheme.
The only reason that it'll go up
is because people are buying it.
It has no intrinsic value.
It's just like every other financial fraud,
like tulips in, you know, humans history,
humanity's history.
I disagreed vehemently, but ultimately left traditional Wall Street to co-found a crypto fund in 2014 in New York that actively managed a portfolio of digital currencies.
And off to the races was my career in crypto attached to a rocket ship.
We were trading during Mt. Gox's implosion when the Silk Road was shut down and the U.S. Marshals Service seized those Bitcoin and essentially washed them with a stamp of approval from the U.S. government that, yes, they were used for illicit purposes, but now we're going to auction them off to the highest bidder of accredited investors with AML and KYC in the U.S. or around the world.
And it was an interesting inflection point for the government's acceptance of this Bitcoin asset.
thing. So still so new at the time. Fast forward a little bit, I joined Credit Suisse to co-found
their blockchain and digital asset team in 2016. I was with the bank for four years from 2016 to
2020. And if you recall those four years, especially 2017 in Bitcoin's life, Bitcoin started
the year at a thousand, ended the year at 20,000. Everyone was talking about it, whether you believed
in it or not. And it was way more mainstream at this point in time. Everyone was talking about it.
And you couldn't avoid those conversations.
And being the blockchain team at this global Swiss bank,
we started to get a lot of inbounds from high net worth and family office clients at the bank.
Being a Swiss bank, we had ultra high net worth clients that started to reach out to the wealth managers saying,
at the private bank, you know, we have 25 million in assets with you.
We'd like to explore a crypto allocation.
Where do you buy? How do you buy? What coins do you buy?
Who are the best counterparties? How do you do your due diligence on these counterparties?
And once you acquire crypto, what do you do with it in terms of custody, self-custody, third-party custody?
Is there insurance?
What happens if you die?
What about tax and estate planning?
All these questions started to go to their contacts at the bank, who, mind you, knew very little or nothing about crypto.
But they knew enough that there was a blockchain team at Credit Suisse.
So they routed and set up this conference call.
And the first few were interesting.
It was Jason, very important client, tons of money with us at the bank.
He has all these questions about crypto.
You're the blockchain team.
Can you answer them?
Of course I can answer them.
I'm looking forward to it.
And one call after another, after another, after another.
After several, word got out, I got internally at Credit Suisse, and I was told by high ups
at the bank that we don't give out crypto investment advice at this regulated Swiss bank.
We're not touching crypto.
We don't trade crypto.
We don't provide liquidity.
or custody. So don't give out any potential, you know, liability driven advice that could
come back and bite us in the butt. So while we don't want to tell these clients that no,
we're not going to take your call and talk to our blockchain team with your questions. Instead,
you can take these calls, but don't tell them where to buy and what to buy. Just kind of,
you know, beat around the bush. Okay. And call after call after call, two years later, I mean,
we're now dozens and dozens of the same exact calls over and over again. And I realized that
there was an opportunity here, that these people needed help. They had nowhere to go. The bank,
where they had all their money, wouldn't help them. You know, Credit Suisse basically took the
approach, following Jamie Dimon's mantra of Bitcoin bad, blockchain good. We do blockchain
at the bank, disintermediate, you know, counterparties, streamline settlements,
expedite settlements, save money for the bank through automation. I mean, blockchain was literally
sitting next to AI and machine learning and robotics and big data and public cloud. We were
blockchain, but we were not Bitcoin or crypto or liquidity. And most banks still aren't in 2025,
which is shocking. But I realized that these people needed help, that there was a huge cohort
of individuals that if they had a professional, you know, accountable firm to work with to help
them allocate from traditional capital markets into the crypto space safely and securely,
that that could be a winning business.
And so I left the bank and I started exactly that in January of 2020, which little did
I know was three months right before the COVID lockdown.
Wild times, you know, in hindsight, really good for crypto, where the global economic
response to the pandemic was very positive for all risk assets.
the idea of just printing money and handing out stimulus checks and where was that money going
into risk into things like bitcoin so then you had tesla and microstrategy started to buy and
allocate to crypto and bitcoin in 2020 and and the bull market was was right in front of us and
new highs in 2020 and obviously 2021 and so business was good you know i started this business
where people needed help getting into the space and it was kind of a wild west leap of faith for
them to take a dive and buy this crazy internet money But because the market was ripping they would buy today and be be up five percent tomorrow and they had that immediate gratification which helped them feel good about their decision
and create organic referrals for me and so i grew this business throughout all of covid and
ultimately uh you know things came crashing down ftx and everything else that followed at the end
of 2022, 2023 really culminated for me with Operation Chokepoint 3.0 in March of 2023,
when, you know, Elizabeth Warren and her, you know, cronies decided to choke off all of the
banking system for the crypto economy by shutting out Silvergate Bank, Signature Bank, and Silicon
Valley Bank in one week in March of 2023. So now all my clients who had bought a lot of Bitcoin in
aggregate, it was only worth what someone else is willing to pay for. That's just how everything on
the planet works, your house, you name it. It's only worth what someone's willing to pay for it.
But if you can't sell it because you can't go to an exchange because the exchange doesn't have a
bank account anymore, well then what do you really own? And that was scary. That was actually in my
in my 12 13 years in crypto that was the single scariest moment on the roller coaster but somehow
blackrock larry fink saved the day only three months not even three months after operation
choke point did they file for a spot bitcoin etf and that to me marked the bottom of that cycle
because suddenly the biggest asset manager on the planet with trillions of dollars
believed in bitcoin and wanted to bring it to the masses in the form of an etf
not a cash settled index futures based ETF like had already existed since 2017, but a spot Bitcoin
ETF, which completely changed the game because it meant that there would be actual buying of Bitcoin
of the scarce asset in order to manage the one to one relationship of the ETF to underlying asset,
which is Bitcoin. And yeah, they really, you know, saved the crypto market. I don't know where we
would have been. And then obviously Trump getting elected helped as well. But ultimately, 2023,
Operation, yeah, that was the darkest point in my career in crypto. But it led to me meeting a fund
that was trying to do on-chain private wealth. What I had built was an off-chain private wealth.
I mean, it was basically white glove concierge helping high net worths and family offices
allocate from capital markets into crypto safely and securely. I met someone in Miami who was trying
to do that on-chain plus bring yield, staking Bitcoin, lending Bitcoin through options,
vaults, strategies, staking your Ethereum, letting your crypto work for you. So I met this individual.
He loved what I'd built. He thought that I was the perfect fit to come and bring everything I
built and put it on-chain. And I did just that. And it was a great fund. On-chain private wealth
asset management uh finally yield on your bitcoin not without risk we were selling basically just
call overwriting selling out of the money you know 510 delta calls on your bitcoin so that you can
collect yield still stay long just give up a little bit of upside and um people liked it and
staking eth obviously was was huge in 2023 2024 and so i was at a i was at this fund um and it was
great and ultimately i just i heard about meanwhile i didn't know what it was we're managing money at
this fund we're trying to earn yield and a couple times i hear about meanwhile but i kind of it's
in my periphery until late 2024 a little more than a year ago uh someone reaches out to me saying hey
i'm at this company called meanwhile and you know love to i was like you know i'd heard about
meanwhile i don't know what it is let's chat and in half an hour i was explained bitcoin
denominated whole life insurance and i almost fell out of my chair literally like my head exploded i
was like oh my god everything i'd been working towards in my crypto career essentially safeguarding
your bitcoin your crypto assets trying to get yield safely without unnecessary risk strong and
safe and secure custody being able to steward your crypto for many years to come the huddle mindset
How do you make sure your Bitcoin even outlives you?
How do you pass it down to your children one day?
All of that in one product that, by the way, was completely tax advantageous because it's life insurance.
I had a wife and two young kids at the time.
I realized the opportunity.
I quickly got my own policy.
Fast forward a couple of months.
My fund was acquired by Circle in January of 2025.
I reached out to the Meanwhile team immediately after and I said, guys, I spoke to the CEO.
I said, this is in my 12 years in crypto, the single most interesting product I've ever seen.
And I asked him, point blank, how do you not have 50,000 clients already?
I mean, come on.
He kind of laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
It was like, come join the team.
Come help us get there.
We'll make up a title for you.
You help us get, you know, run distribution and growth and strategy and partnerships and
ultimately sales.
And I said, yeah, I've already sold three policies through friends and family before
even joined the company because I told everyone who was willing to listen about this and I thought
it was brilliant and they all agreed and yeah you know joined the company earlier this year and it's
really been this unbelievable product elegantly wrapped in the form of life insurance and there's
so much to it to unpack I don't know where you want to begin but health insurance is broken I
know it you know it so an open enrollment rolls around and all those health insurance companies
start hoping you'll just re-sign, eyes closed, for the same overpriced plan with confusing fine
printing. It feels like they're betting on your inaction, but we deserve better than that. That's
why I started looking for something different for me and my family. Something honest. That's when I
found CrowdHealth. With CrowdHealth, it's not about profits. It's about people and community. You get
a team that helps negotiate your bills, access to low-cost prescriptions and lab tests, and a list
of doctors who don't treat you like a number. And if something major happens, you cover the first
$500. Then the crowd steps in to help share the rest. It feels real. It feels like taking care of
your health the way it should be. Simple, direct, and human. Thousands of members already say crowd
health saved them tens of thousands of dollars over traditional insurance. And with many subsidy
programs ending and costs rising, there's never been a more important time to take charge of your
healthcare. So this open enrollment, don't sign because you're told to, sign because you choose
to. If you're ready to join a community that looks out for you, give CrowdHealth a try.
Join CrowdHealth to get started today for $99 for your first three months using code MATRIX at
joincrowdhealth.com. CrowdHealth is not insurance. Opt out. Take your power back. This is how we win.
What is traditional life insurance before Bitcoin and break down maybe whole versus term?
Yeah. So in traditional life insurance, you typically go to a life insurance carrier and you ask for coverage.
A $1 million policy on my life. You have two options, term or whole life.
Term is very simple. I have term myself. And it's really simple.
you pay a premium for a period of time, a term. And if you die, a payout, a million dollars, will
be paid to whoever you designate as your beneficiaries. In my case, my wife. It lasts for 10 years. In my
case, 20, 30 years, you do whatever you want. It's relatively inexpensive. And that's all it is. You
pay premium based on your age and health and other factors. And if you die, it pays out. If you outlive
the term, nothing happens. Whole life, as part of its name, lasts your whole life. So it's very
different. And because it lasts for a much longer period of time, it's much more expensive.
There's also an investment component and all these tax advantages attributed to whole life.
And that's exactly what Meanwhile does is Bitcoin denominate whole life. But to understand
how it works, traditional whole life insurance, you go to your carrier, any carrier, you say,
I want a million dollar policy of whole life on my life. And they'll crunch numbers based on your
age, health, sex and smoking status. And they'll dictate to you an amount of premium that you have
to pay either each month or each year in dollars. And obviously there's baked in fees and expenses
in that dollar premium payment. And it goes into a mutual fund, essentially an investment account
that has a guaranteed growth rate, very conservative, of like 4% per year. Every year, that mutual fund,
those dollars in premium are going in the mutual fund that grows 4% per year, tax-free every year.
And there are a lot of tax advantages in life insurance that make it appealing. And then there's
one fatal flaw in traditional life insurance I'll get to in a second, which is why Meanwhile exists.
But to go along this example of this mutual fund, million dollars in death benefit, you're paying
this dollar premium into this mutual fund. Fast forward years into the future, at 4% per year,
let's say 20 years into the future, it's up 30%. What you can do in whole life insurance,
which is great, is you can borrow money. You can get a loan. Maybe you want to buy a house,
down payment on a house, whatever it might be. And it's all tax free. And if you think about that,
if you need money, if you have any investment that's up 30%, or portfolio or broker brokerage
account, or you name it, and you want to pull some cash and value out of it, you're going to have to
pay gains cap gains on that 30% appreciation, almost all scenarios. In whole life insurance,
it's completely tax free. And you ask yourself, why is it tax free? Why are the assets growing
tax free? Why are the policy loans tax free? And when you pass, the money goes to your family tax
free. How does that work? And why is it built that way? Well, the government wants everyone who can
afford it to have life insurance, because it protects you, it protects your family, it creates
less dependency on the government for less welfare, less handouts. And so the incentive mechanism,
the levers that the government has decided to put in place in order to try to incentivize you
to get life insurance, if you can afford it, is everything's tax free. The fatal flaw of life
insurance in today's day and age in our economy is that it's all dollar based it's all fiat based
and there's high inflation right now i mean you you go to the grocery store you look at the price of
eggs whatever it is in your life that you feel like things are getting really expensive
year over year well life insurance pays out in dollars and while a million dollars might sound
like a lot 10 years 20 years into the future it might not buy as much as it buys today probably
won't. And so how can you improve life insurance where you continuously have these tax advantages,
which are great. We all want to minimize our tax liabilities, but improve the payout. Well,
why don't you do it in an asset that goes up and up or its purchasing power increases instead of
decreases on a year-over-year basis, an asset like Bitcoin. And that was essentially the memo
that my CEO and founder, Zach Townsend,
who built, meanwhile, and founded it in 2022,
wrote, Silicon Valley guy,
well-connected in the Bay Area.
And he wrote this memo when he realized that,
wouldn't it be great if you can apply
all these tax advantages of life insurance to your Bitcoin,
essentially a life insurance tax wrapper for Bitcoin.
And how do you do it?
Bitcoin denominated life insurance.
And so he circulated this memo out to his network
and he quickly raised a seed round from Northwestern Mutual,
one of the biggest life insurance companies in the world,
Google's Gradient Ventures, Sam Altman from OpenAI,
and a bunch of other big-name investors on just this premise and idea.
We raised $22 million in a seed round in 2022 and 2023 and off to the races.
I joined the company in 2024, end of 2024, early 2025.
Since then, we've raised a Series A, $40 million.
We raised a second fundraising round in October a couple months ago of $82 million.
And backing us are Bain Capital, Apollo, Northwestern Mutual, Pantera, Han.
We have a pretty big name of investors.
And we are a Bermuda-based life insurance carrier that is completely on the Bitcoin standard.
so in order to realize this vision that zach and his co-founder had the only way to do this the
reason that northwestern or any other life insurance company couldn't just do it themselves
is because you have to start a brand new company from the ground up on the bitcoin standard where
bitcoin is your functional currency what does that mean that to have a policy you're paying
your premiums in bitcoin your death benefits paid out in bitcoin and these policy loans are in
Bitcoin, but you're going to get a new stepped up cost basis because policy loans and life
insurance are tax free. How do you make that happen in a new currency? Well, the currency
gets a new cost basis the day you originate the loan. So it's all this fascinating concept of,
hey, life insurance has now entered the crypto room. Yeah. Well, let's walk through,
because this sounds awesome. Let's walk through what a Bitcoin life insurance policy would look
like. Maybe can we use some hypothetical numbers? Sure. What would sort of the terms and the
the premiums look like, and the death benefit.
So what we built is a 10 pay or limited pay,
non-participating whole life policy.
10 pay means you're going to pay your premiums
in equal annual installments over 10 years.
So let's say, for example, there's a 35-year-old healthy,
non male and he has 10 Bitcoin premium Now even to back up for a second we had to change a couple of things to make Bitcoin life insurance work relative to traditional life insurance
namely the currency,
the fact that it's a scarce asset, Bitcoin,
with finite supply.
And so while you're used to going to a carrier
and saying, hey, I'd like a million-dollar policy
or a 10-Bitcoin policy, let's say,
and then they would crunch numbers
and dictate to you an amount of premium you have to pay,
well, we can't do that.
Why can't we do that?
Because that would then mean that we have to tell you how much Bitcoin in premium you have to pay.
You have to pay five Bitcoin in premium.
But we don't know how much Bitcoin you have.
You might say, what are you talking about?
I only have three Bitcoin.
It's a scarce asset.
We don't know how much Bitcoin anyone has.
So we had to flip the script basically upside down.
Instead of asking for coverage, you come to us with an amount of Bitcoin that you know you have,
that you'd like to use as premium.
And you say, hey, what do I get for this?
We will then crunch numbers based on your age, health, sex, and smoking status
and give you a death benefit ratio in Bitcoin
that you get relative to the amount of premium you want to pay.
So given it's a 10 pay, you're paying over 10 years
in equal annual installments,
regardless of the price of Bitcoin,
because remember, one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin.
Everything's in Bitcoin.
It doesn't matter the dollar or euro or yen price of Bitcoin.
You're going to choose an amount of Bitcoin
that you want to use as premium.
So let's say a 35-year-old comes to me and says,
hey guys, I have 10 Bitcoin that I'd like to use as premium.
What do I get for it?
Well, based on his age, 35, and all those other factors, he gets about 18 Bitcoin in death benefit.
So that's an eight extra Bitcoin or an 80% return he gets over the course of his life.
Then you have to ask yourself, well, how does 10 Bitcoin become 18 Bitcoin?
Where does this extra eight come from?
Well, like all life insurance, all whole life insurance, traditional life, you're going to get a 4% guaranteed growth rate yield.
The minimum amount of yield in order to qualify as life insurance is 2%.
and that's the number we chose to go with.
We guarantee every policyholder
that we're going to grow your policy by 2% per year
in Bitcoin-denominated terms.
In other words, you're getting 2% yield in Bitcoin.
Every year, over the course of your life,
we amortize out to age 100.
So 2% annual compounded growth rate out to age 100
for a 35-year-old, that's 65 years
of compound annual growth rate of 2%,
10, 10.2, 10.4, do the math.
And because it's paid over 10 years,
it starts with one Bitcoin in year one, 1.02 is the 2%. The second Bitcoin year two, 2.02 and then
2% on that and you compound that way. And if you do the math out to age 100, it's approximately
18 Bitcoin. And the yield is where it gets really interesting because everyone wants yield.
Everyone wants to grow their Bitcoin. I mean, your Bitcoin is self-custody or basically any
custody is just sitting there collecting digital dust, so to speak. It's not doing anything. It's
not working for you. And so how do we get yield? And that's one of the key components to our
business that I'd like to dive into a little bit. Yes, please. I'd love to know where the yield
comes from. So what we are as a life insurance company, as a carrier in the Bitcoin space,
is a business with very long dated liabilities. We have 20 year olds who have policies.
they're not going to die for 60, 70, 75, 80 years.
So our liabilities are very long dated
and therefore we're willing to take duration.
We're willing to take long-term loans
with the right counterparties
that meet our very, very conservative risk parameters.
We're very conservative by nature
because we have to be around for decades,
for generations to pay these death benefits
well into the future.
So how do we do that?
Well, we figured out, devised a certain loan structure that solves a native problem for Bitcoin.
Anyone with low cost basis Bitcoin, the perfect example are Bitcoin miners.
If you think about Bitcoin miners, especially the ones that have been mining Bitcoin for a very long time,
they have lots of Bitcoin that they've been mining for years with different vintages, different prices that they've accumulated along the way.
You mine Bitcoin at $100. You mine Bitcoin at $1,000, $10,000, $50,000. Bitcoin miners have
capex needs. They need to pay for their business. And a lot of those capex needs are dollar
denominated. They have to pay in dollars for electricity to power their mining rates, for
new computers, for rent, for where their miners are located in warehouses to the landlord dollars.
So miners have dollar-based capex needs.
And the question is, how do they go from Bitcoin, the revenue, to dollars?
Well, or any fiat.
Primarily two ways.
Option one is get loans against their ASICs, borrow against their machines and facilities.
Those loans are expensive.
They could be 15 plus percent and their machines are collateral.
but a much more simpler way for all Bitcoin miners to get dollars is sell Bitcoin.
And so if you're going to sell Bitcoin, the question is what Bitcoin are you going to sell?
Remember, you have all these different vintages, and just like everyone else,
they have to pay taxes, capital gains taxes.
So today at $90,000 a coin, does it make sense to sell Bitcoin you mind at $100?
Of course not.
The corporate tax rate is over 20%.
It's non-economic to incur that tax liability.
You'd much rather sell Bitcoin you mined today, yesterday, last week, last month, than Bitcoin you mined 10 years ago, five years ago, or even two years ago, given the price appreciation we've seen.
And so what do they do with all that low cost basis Bitcoin that they should have sold or wish they did something with at the time?
And Bitcoin's gone up so quickly, so fast that they didn't yet.
Well, the answer is nothing.
They can't do anything.
Their CFO, their treasurer does not want to incur any non-economic expenses that will eat into their bottom line on an annual basis.
These are businesses with, you know, a business model.
And so you don't do that with your low-cost basis Bitcoin.
So what can you do?
Nothing until meanwhile rolled around with this way to free up your low-cost basis Bitcoin in the form of a loan,
in the form of a one-year repurchase agreement or repo that allows you to swap low-cost basis Bitcoin with high-cost basis Bitcoin.
The way it works is in the form of a one-year repo, our counterparty, a miner with low-cost basis Bitcoin, they can loan us, let's say, 100 low-cost basis Bitcoin that they don't want to have a taxable liability with.
And we'll loan them back 100 Bitcoin.
That assumes today's cost basis.
They pay us 3.5% in interest up front.
So really, they're going to mechanically pay us, lend us 100 Bitcoin, and we'll lend them back 96.5 Bitcoin.
That's the 3.5%.
And with that 96.5 Bitcoin, it assumes today's cost basis because this is a fixed income debt instrument, a repurchase agreement.
And there is no taxable event.
So they get 96.5 Bitcoin that they can immediately sell for all their CapEx needs.
And it's a one-year term.
At the end of the year, they can repay the loan, the 96.5, and receive their original low-cost basis Bitcoin back.
Remember, this is a deferral of taxes, not avoidance.
They're still going to get their low-cost basis Bitcoin back.
But they also have the option of rolling this loan to the next year, paying another three and a half percent.
And then the year after that and the year after that, three and a half percent, 3.5 Bitcoin continuously.
And so what do we meanwhile get out of this?
Well, from our perspective, we're getting three and a half percent yield paid in Bitcoin denominated terms up front with no counterparty or credit risk.
Why? Because this is a fully collateralized loan.
if our counterparty disappears or goes bankrupt or doesn't pay back the loan or anything happens
between now and then it doesn't matter to us because remember we have all 100 bitcoin of theirs
they only have 96.5 of ours so we get three and a half percent yield of which we give two percent
to all of our policyholders and we keep one and a half percent for ourselves that's how meanwhile
makes money and it's a very clever way of solving a problem for low-cost basis bitcoiners like miners
by allowing them to free up that low-cost basis
without triggering a taxable event,
by getting us yield without counterparty risk,
and giving that yield to all of our policyholders
in the most conservative, risk-averse terms possible.
Our regulator loves it.
We love it.
Our policyholders love it.
Because we're not lending Bitcoin to the Three Arrows Capital
and all these shady counterparties
that will blow up and lose coin and create credit events.
We are doing this very risk averse financial contract to get yield conservative.
We're not looking for 10% yield.
We only need to get 2% for our policyholders.
And what's on top is how we make money as a firm.
And yeah, it's a very clever way to grow Bitcoin.
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Yeah, I mean, it seems ingenious. It's fully collateralized.
My only questions would be sort of how robust and consistent and long term is that market?
And maybe the margins come down a little bit over time.
Maybe they go up.
It's a live market.
It's dynamic.
It's a good question.
How many miners have low cost basis Bitcoin still?
Or what happens in the future with this idea of low cost?
What is low cost basis Bitcoin?
Well, it depends on their corporate tax rate, on their jurisdiction.
And every jurisdiction varies on the corporate tax rate.
But the truth is that low cost basis Bitcoin is a moving target.
I believe Bitcoin is going to go well into the millions in our lifetime.
That means $100,000 Bitcoin is going to be low cost basis one day.
So I believe there will always be low cost basis Bitcoin.
But rough numbers, there's thousands and thousands of low cost basis Bitcoin held by miners across the world right now.
And so the capacity is pretty robust for our purposes for the foreseeable future.
and as bitcoin appreciates higher into the future there will be more and more low cost basis bitcoin
so to speak sure and then maybe thinking about you know borrowing and lending bitcoin how can
policyholders borrow against their policy is that possible yeah so just like in traditional life
insurance where your dollars go into a mutual fund the mutual fund has a guaranteed growth rate of
four percent per year and in the future it's up 30 percent and you can get a loan let's say you
of a million dollar policy, you can always borrow up to a certain percentage of the surrender value
or cash value of your life insurance policy. 90% is how we do it. So you can borrow up to 90%
of the surrender value. With traditional life insurance, that surrender value, if that borrow
amount, let's say it's $100,000, then you could borrow $100,000 tax-free, not have to pay capital
gains on that 30% appreciation. And that $100,000, you don't have to repay it. It's just going to net
out of the death benefit. Your death benefit was a million dollars, you're borrowing 100K.
Your new death benefit is $900,000.
Therefore, you do not have to repay the loan.
You get all $100,000 tax-free.
It comes with an interest rate.
You do have to pay interest on that loan,
which will also net out of the remaining $900,000 death benefit.
And you can let it accrue for life.
And same concept in principle with meanwhile,
except everything's in Bitcoin.
And it's growing at 2% per year in Bitcoin-denominated terms.
So let's paint a picture.
You have this 35-year-old 10 Bitcoin premium,
18 in death benefit.
Bitcoin goes to a million dollars in five years.
And this person wants some cash.
They want to maybe buy a house, whatever it is.
Well, with Meanwhile, you could borrow up to 90% of the surrender value.
And so he's going to log into his account at meanwhile.bm.
And he's going to see available loan amount.
And it'll be 90% of the surrender value.
So let's say, you know, he's paid five Bitcoin in premium at the time.
Surrender value is right around four.
He could probably borrow three.
Let's say he could borrow three Bitcoin max.
And he wants to do it.
He wants to borrow three Bitcoin.
So the first step will be, meanwhile, we'll prompt him with, where do you want this Bitcoin sent to?
It's not dollars.
You're not borrowing dollars.
We're not wiring you money.
It's Bitcoin.
So give us a wallet address.
And he gives us a wallet address.
We're then going to screen it with Chainalysis.
Make sure it's not going to North Korea or Iran or Venezuela.
And we're going to send him three Bitcoin.
At that point, meanwhile, it's pretty much done because you're getting Bitcoin, not dollars.
But he wants dollars.
So what does he do?
Well, he's going to turn around and go to an exchange or broker that he has an account or relationship with.
And he's going to say, Bitcoin's at a million bucks.
I have three Bitcoin I'd like to sell, please.
And they're going to say, great, but where's this Bitcoin coming from?
And what's the cost basis for tax purposes?
He's going to have a loan document from Meanwhile that says,
this comes from my regulated life insurance policy at Meanwhile.
And it says right here that the cost basis was established on the day I originated this loan.
So in this case, it's a million dollars a coin.
While he might have used his Bitcoin that he bought at $50,000 a coin many years ago
to fund his policy,
borrowing different new Bitcoin
from the life insurance carrier
at a new stepped up cost basis.
In this case, a million dollars a coin.
Just like traditional life policy loans tax-free,
it was up 30% the mutual fund.
Bitcoin's a highly convex asset
with asymmetric upside,
it happens to be up 1,000%.
Still tax-free, still life insurance.
And this is how that mechanically works.
You get the stepped up basis.
So he sells three Bitcoin at a million each.
That's three million cash.
He withdraws it from the exchange or whatever into his bank account Now he has million He does not need to repay the loan His death benefit nets down from 18 minus three to 15 There a 3 interest rate on the loan So he going to pay
3% annually on the three Bitcoin, which will also get netted out of his remaining 15 Bitcoin death
benefit. And so he's also, very importantly, not at risk of a margin call. You ask yourself,
What happens if Bitcoin crashes from a million dollars to $200,000 after this 80% correction, as we've seen historically?
The answer, nothing, because he's borrowing Bitcoin against Bitcoin collateral.
He's borrowing from himself.
He's not borrowing from a life insurance company.
He's not borrowing from an exchange.
He's not borrowing from a lender.
He's not borrowing dollars against Bitcoin as you do with traditional lenders in the crypto economy where you can post Bitcoin as collateral and borrow dollars against it for like 15%.
No, no, no.
he's borrowing Bitcoin against Bitcoin.
He's borrowing from himself or his beneficiaries,
his loved ones, his family.
And so he doesn't have to repay the loan
and he's not at risk of a margin call.
So it's a very clever way
to be able to monetize your Bitcoin.
And by the way,
remember he's only paying 10 Bitcoin in premium
and he's borrowing against that 18 number.
He still has 15 or so left in his death benefit.
Five extra Bitcoin that he didn't have
before he had a policy.
So it's this really unbelievable product,
Bitcoin-denominated life insurance
or this life insurance wrapper for Bitcoin.
Yeah, and I guess there's, you know,
if you borrow the three Bitcoin at a million
and Bitcoin goes down to 500,000,
you could rebuy the Bitcoin and pay yourself back
if you want to get back and top back up.
And if Bitcoin runs from a million to 10 million,
you might just say, you know what,
I'm not going to pay that back
and I will just have it netted out at the end.
You are thinking like a trader, my man.
That is arbitrage. And it is a true opportunity that you have. So let's continue that. Bitcoin
crashes to $500,000, 50% drawdown. Well, he just got $3 million when he sold three Bitcoin at a
million each. He still has half of it left over, $1.5 million. And he says, you know what? I'm
going to buy three new Bitcoin at $500,000 each for $1.5 million, and I'm going to repay the loan.
Why am I going to do that? Well, I'm going to free up more loan capacity for myself from my
policy in the future. Stop paying the 3% interest rate, because I believe on the next bull run,
Bitcoin is going to go to $3 million. And so by repaying the loan, keeping $1.5 million in cash,
mind you, and repaying the loan, having no more liability, so to speak, you've just arbitraged
$1.5 million in this life insurance product. And that's exactly right. And some people will be
clever enough to figure that out. There'll be others that will use all the cash, and they'll
continue to use all the cash. They'll do this concept of infinite banking in Bitcoin, which is,
you know, have whole life and use the tax-free cash value, the policy loans to fund your life,
fund your expenses because of the tax advantages. And to do it in Bitcoin, you know, today you sell
one Bitcoin, maybe next year you only have to sell half a Bitcoin for the same amount of dollars and
two years, a quarter Bitcoin for the same amount of dollars and your life. Our expenses are still
dollars rent or mortgage or car payments or amazon or whatever um and so you use the policy values to
fund your life all tax-free which is pretty pretty clever but others like you like me i have my own
policy we're going to look at the arbitrage opportunities here too when when's the earliest
you can take against your policy um there's a two-year incubation period you're borrowing
against a surrender value so there is no surrender value in the first year of any life insurance
contract and you have to wait another year. So it's two years total before you can begin the
policy loans and then off to the races after that. And can policy loans help you avoid capital gains
tax in any other ways? Well, I mean, I could speak for Meanwhile and Bitcoin, but it's certainly
there's no capital gains tax at all when you're selling Bitcoin at a higher price because you're
borrowing against a life insurance policy, as opposed to selling Bitcoin at a million dollars,
let's say, for cash and paying a very big capital gains tax outside of life insurance,
relative to whatever your cost basis is, you do it inside life insurance and there is no capital
gains tax. How much do you think life insurance is about the tax achievement and just the transfer
of intergenerational wealth? Yeah, I think that's a really important point too. We have young guys
that are single and don't have families, don't even think they need life insurance. They don't
even think of a product as life insurance. They just think of it from the infinite banking,
you know, policy loan, tax-free policy loan perspective. And others who do think of it as
life insurance, they might have a family and they want their Bitcoin to outlive them. They think,
for example, my Bitcoin's in self-custody. I'm married with kids. If I get hit by a bus tragically
tomorrow, does my wife know how to access my Bitcoin? It's valuable assets worth over $90,000
a coin. It can pay for a lot of things for my family to take care of them for some time.
And what a terrible tragedy it would be. Your Bitcoin died with you and you had a family left
behind that couldn't figure out how to monetize it. They didn't know where the private keys or
passwords or any of that was. And so how do you ensure and guarantee that your Bitcoin outlives
you? Well, in life insurance, there's an inheritance component where, while my wife might
not be the most tech savvy or crypto savvy person where if I did die tomorrow could she figure out
my self-custody my private keys seed phrases where I have exchanged or broke relationships with what
to do with the bitcoin how to move it on the blockchain how to sell it if the answer is no
well we expect a lot of our clients policyholders have similar family dynamics where they're the
the crypto person in their family and what this does what bitcoin life insurance does is it takes
away all the complexity of reliance on your family to figure out how to what to do with Bitcoin if you
die because all they need to know is that you had a policy this life insurance company and file a
claim you don't need to know anything about private key management seed phrases passwords
ledgers safe safety deposit boxes Google authenticator MPC all these things very complicated
I have a treasure map written handwritten treasure map in a safe of what to do if you know in the
case of my death. Well, with life insurance, it takes all that complexity away. And all you need
to do is reach out to Meanwhile and say, hey, so-and-so passed away. I know I'm the beneficiary.
What do I do? Well, in a white glove concierge manner, Meanwhile will work with the grieving
beneficiaries and help them get their assets that are owed to them. And we also anticipate that there
might be some beneficiaries who might be averse to having to deal with Bitcoin and say, listen,
my husband for example was the bitcoin person in my family and now he's gone i don't ever want to
see or hear bitcoin again i just want dollars well we'll help them handhold them through the process
of receiving bitcoin and then liquidating it to help them get what they need because we understand
there might be a lot of people that just want dollars and the beauty of life insurance is that
upon death your bitcoin receives a new cost basis stepped up cost basis the price of bitcoin is
higher. And so let's say Bitcoin is $5 million when a policyholder passes away. Well, they'll get
Bitcoin, 18 Bitcoin in this example at $5 million a coin. They want to sell it all.
They can go to the trading desk that will help them make an introduction to and sell all 18
Bitcoin at $5 million a coin. Their cost basis on that Bitcoin is $5 million a coin. Tax-free.
They can get all that cash. Wow. I mean, it really seems like a phenomenal product in terms of
how it services, you know, the use case.
How does Meanwhile handle custody risk and regulation?
We custody with the premier custodians on the planet,
Anchorage, Digital, Coinbase, a few others we're working on.
Those are the only two that we work with at the moment,
at the time of recording.
And I mean, there's no two better custodians in the world
as far as we see.
They're regulated and licensed in the US.
Coinbase is a publicly traded company, as we all know.
They're scrutinized meticulously.
They're overseen. Their custodian is a trust company in the U.S. Same with Anchorage. A federally
chartered trust company by the OCC means that all their assets in custody are what's called
bankruptcy remote, or in the event of a bankruptcy, the assets in custody are insulated from any
bankruptcy proceedings. They have, each of these custodians have insurance policies, insurance
providers like Lloyd's of London or AXA or Aon or Marsh to protect against theft, insider theft,
hacking, you know, you name it. And so we feel, and they're also cybersecurity companies first. I
mean, you have to be a cybersecurity company if you are going to be protecting billions,
hundreds of billions of digital bearer instrument assets like crypto, like Bitcoin. And so we feel
that these are the most well-established, secure custodians on the planet. And we feel very,
very comfortable, and you should too, that your Bitcoin is safely custodied there.
And what about being domiciled in Bermuda? How did that come about? And what's the reasoning there?
Yeah, when Zach founded the company in 2022, and really built it in 2022 and 2023,
and Northwestern Mutual was an early seed investor, it was figured out very quickly that
Bermuda is one of the life insurance capitals on the planet.
They're a hub.
And for good reason.
They are considered one of the most credible, legitimate regulators of the life insurance industry.
Over 1,000, I think over 1,200 different insurance companies are domiciled in Bermuda.
Trillions of dollars of assets in Bermuda.
Why?
Because they are widely considered to be the best regulator of insurance companies in the world,
the Bermuda Monetary Authority, our chief regulator where we have our licenses.
and we feel very comfortable being there.
They, the BMA, loves us.
They're forward thinking.
They're embracing of innovation, embracing of Bitcoin.
It took them a while to get comfortable
with Bitcoin-denominated life insurance.
They kept us in their regulatory sandbox for like a year
before they released us into the wild
and said you can now start selling policies.
And from a U.S. perspective or anyone else,
I mean, having a Bermuda-based life insurance company
gives you a little extra asset protection
because it's technically offshore, your assets.
And so, you know, it goes back to thinking like, you know, an anecdote.
Canada, remember during COVID, the Canada truckers protests?
And these truckers who were peacefully protesting
against the draconian COVID restrictions
imposed by a Western democratic government,
they had their banks and credit cards seized and frozen
for protesting nonviolently.
And to have something like Bitcoin outside of that banking system gives you solace, something that they can't touch.
In Bermuda, offshore, even more protection.
So there's something to be said about having offshore, regulated, licensed life insurance policy that gives you added bonus, added protection.
And there's one other cool bonus, too, that we only recently realized is true.
weird and sad headlines of people getting tortured or kidnapped for their Bitcoin,
these wrench attacks.
Gun to your head, give me your Bitcoin.
People are being tortured in Manhattan, in the village, I think it was,
or in Paris, in France.
You hear these stories.
Gun to your head, give me your Bitcoin.
Private keys, whatever it might be.
Well, your Bitcoin in life insurance,
it is a very, very good way to prevent against any type of wrench attack.
Why?
Because it technically could take us 30 days to move your Bitcoin.
Cancel your policy, get all your Bitcoin premium back.
you want to borrow against your policy it takes days you can't expect that someone with you know
brash you know wrench wrench attack is going to try to kidnap you for a month i mean these
things happen anecdotally hours or days so you have this extra protection against that which is
a very real threat um i'm on a podcast right now going hopefully going viral people know cedric
People know the Bitcoin matrix.
Like, we're not unknown people in the Bitcoin economy, in the Bitcoin world, and just the world in general.
And so to have a little extra protection against that, there's something to be said.
Yeah, everyone has to really think through their own threat vector and sort of the way they sort of allocate and sort of defend against these things and have plausible deniability.
How does these policies work with, say, family estate planning and trusts?
Yeah, so there are typically three parties to every life insurance contract.
You have the owner, you have the insured, and the beneficiary.
The owner can be an individual, it can be an entity, it can be a trust.
And the owner has one responsibility, which is paying the premium.
And they also have access to the tax-free policy loans.
If the owner is a trust, you appoint a trustee.
The trustee pays the premiums and has access to the policy loans on behalf of the trust.
Then you have the insured.
It's a single human life between ages 18 and 65.
We're a young, relatively young life insurance company, very conservative.
We're only insuring people right now between 18 and 65.
I am pushing us to lower that bottom threshold down to zero.
Because we've had a lot of requests from new grandparents who want to buy a policy for a
grandchild. And there's this thing called Gerber Life, like Gerber, the baby company, has a life
insurance. You can buy life insurance for newborns. And to be able to do it in Bitcoin and allow your
Bitcoin to accrue for at least 18 years, hopefully more. I mean, what an amazing gift that would be,
even if it's just a quarter Bitcoin or half a Bitcoin policy for a grandchild or a newborn.
powerful at least I think so so finally you have the beneficiaries the
beneficiaries can be an individual it can be multiple individuals in any
splits or ratios you want it can be a trust it could be an entity it can be a
charity the beneficiary files the claim when the insured passes and has access
to the assets upon death who do you think this policy is a great fit for how
How would you describe those kinds of people?
For starters, anyone with Bitcoin.
Right now we operate in the US and Canada.
Very, very soon, like weeks will be Hong Kong and Singapore.
We're going global.
We have world domination in mind.
But anyone with Bitcoin, this is how you get yield.
This is how you monetize your Bitcoin tax free.
This is how you pass down your Bitcoin to future generations tax free safely and securely
so your Bitcoin outlives you.
I mean, there's stories, anecdotes from California, if you remember the Pacific Palisades fire,
where a very, very wealthy enclave burnt to the ground in that tragic fire.
And people had ledgers, self-custody wallets in safes in those houses.
Safes are typically sold as fireproof.
Well, the fire was so hot.
It was such an intense conflagration that I guess these safes had an upper limit of heat that they could sustain.
And I don't think any of these safes survived.
And a lot of people that I read online and heard from word of mouth, their ledgers were gone.
And there were people that didn't understand the idea of backup and make sure your private keys and ledgers are in two different places.
And people lost their Bitcoin permanently.
It's actually estimated that 15 to 20 percent of all Bitcoin ever mined is permanently lost, at least until it's quantum computing.
And that's another discussion.
And so who is this for?
Anyone with Bitcoin that wants their Bitcoin to outlive them.
really we market towards high net worth individuals family offices trust it's great for estate planning
but yeah you have to have bitcoin paying your premiums in bitcoin so whether you already have
bitcoin or whether you're considering allocating to bitcoin for the first time this is a place to
put your bitcoin that gives you yield that gives you the ability to get policy loans tax-free and
that allows you to leave more bitcoin than you had to begin with to your family to your beneficiaries
one day. That sounds great. How would you compare this then like whole life versus,
say, self-directed IRAs where you can hold your own? Yeah, IRAs, Roth IRAs, which are tax
advantage too, are great, except you have to wait till you're 59 and a half before you can access
them. Life insurance, they're guaranteed and fixed from day one on that death benefit for the 35
year old 18 Bitcoin death benefit. If he dies tomorrow after he pays his first premium, that 18
gets fully paid out. So there's no incubation period. There's no waiting until you're retired
59 and a half or 60 before you can access any of this. In a traditional IRA, you still have to pay
taxes on withdrawals. In a Roth, it's already post-tax dollars or assets that go in. I have a
Roth with a lot of Bitcoin ETF in it, but yeah, I'm almost 40. I still have another 20 years to go
before I can touch it.
I got to be patient.
So I would rather have life insurance
or I'd have a mix of the two for sure
so that you can at least start using your Bitcoin now
tax-free or shortly after tax-free
versus waiting decades.
I didn realize that So if someone signs up and they pay the first year premium and they happen to pass away they get the full death benefit The death benefit is guaranteed and fixed from day one in Bitcoin regardless of the price of Bitcoin
18 Bitcoin pays out, whether it's a dollar a coin or $10 million a coin, whatever it is, 18 Bitcoin going to that beneficiary.
We as a company are fully agnostic to the price of Bitcoin.
I mean, you look at the last month or so of the volatility in Bitcoin, peaked at $125,000, $126,000 on October 6th, crashed on October 10th after the tariffs were announced and some other liquidation news from $120,000 to like $100,000.
We were asked what happened to meanwhile during that period.
Nothing, nothing changed.
One Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is so much our functional currency that our audited financials are on our website.
and you'll see a table of numbers, assets and liabilities with B's in front of each number,
not dollar signs. We measure everything in Bitcoin. And so you're a policy holder. Your premium is a
fixed number of Bitcoin that you have to pay over 10 years. Your death benefit is a fixed amount of
Bitcoin that gets paid out to your beneficiaries. It doesn't matter what the dollar or euro or yen
or yuan or peso or litecoin price of Bitcoin is trading at. One Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin.
Okay, what is the application process like? I want to sign up. What do I have to do?
Visit our website, meanwhile.bm. Everything's online. The full underwriting application process
happens online, especially if you're in the U.S. Because what's unique about the U.S. and Canada
is there is a centralized database of everybody's medical health records and
prescription drug history that life insurance carriers have unique access to. So you apply
online it takes 20 30 minutes and you don't have to visit a doctor for a physical you do not have
to submit blood or urine samples we have access to your health records we can underwrite you
remotely online meaning we've taken the process application process in traditional life insurance
from months down to a couple days you can apply today have a policy two or three business days
from now all you have to do after you're approved is send in your first year premium whatever bitcoin
amount is that number is that you choose. We don't tell you what to pay. You choose your premium
amount and you have an active policy. Do you have any advice or guidance, obviously not financial
advice, but around what someone should be thinking about for a premium amount? I certainly can't and
don't. And meanwhile, it doesn't give tax advice. I don't want to tell anyone what they should do.
I can tell you I have more than 50 percent of all my Bitcoin in a policy. I got my policy before
even join the company. It really depends on what you're looking to do. I would say that people that
are older tend to put more of their Bitcoin in a policy because they're thinking about legacy
and estate planning and passing down to their heirs one day. If you're older than 65 and you're
like, damn, I'm too old. I can't apply for a policy. Well, you can get a policy on a family
member who's younger and does qualify for a policy. An owner, a baby boomer with lots of
Bitcoin can buy a policy on a son, sorry, a child or a grandchild who does qualify. The closer they
are to 18, the younger and healthier they are, the bigger the death benefit relative to premiums paid.
And so what we typically see is the older you are, the more of your Bitcoin net worth you put
into a policy. You want the yield, you want the tax-free policy loans into your retirement to
spend your Bitcoin and whatever's left over you leave to your family. But we've seen lots of
There's people that are skeptical and hesitant
and just do a small number.
The minimum policy size is a quarter Bitcoin,
0.25 Bitcoin paid over 10 years,
which would be 0.025 Bitcoin per year
in premium for 10 years.
The maximum size we do right now
is 50 Bitcoin in death benefit.
That premium amount depends on how old you are how old the insured is but it could be like 20 30 40 Bitcoin premium for a 50 Bitcoin face amount policy Wow It really interesting the way you can sponsor or pay for policies on others as a way of tax deferring
Congratulations on the recent raise.
Thank you.
Yeah, big number.
All the raises.
What do you think some of these funders are betting on?
They're not known Bitcoiners.
Yeah, I think that they're betting on the growth of the insurance industry. I think they're realizing that there is a pushback against a lot of the traditional whole life and variable life and variable universal life types of policies that have been operating in fiat because of high inflation that we've seen of the dollar and other fiat based currencies.
the appeal and the luster of tax advantage life insurance is decreasing but when you have an asset
like bitcoin being the basis of life insurance it makes a lot of sense our investors they believe
in bitcoin's asymmetric upside potential and realize like if something's going to go up a lot
over the course of your life or your children's lives,
wouldn't it be great if it was tax advantaged as well?
And that's exactly what we've built.
And so our aspirations are to be
the biggest life insurance company on the planet.
There are other branches in the life insurance industry
in terms of products that we're going to be rolling out.
I described our 10 pay in Hong Kong and Singapore.
We're launching a single pay premium product.
As all life insurance companies have annuities, that's where it gets really interesting.
Fixed deferred annuities, Bitcoin denominated, to be able to, you know, 1035 exchange a dollar-based annuity into a Bitcoin-denominated annuity to get your Bitcoin exposure and annuitize a Bitcoin pension into your wallet or bank account on a monthly basis, for example, could be really powerful.
And there's a ton of dollar-based annuities in the U.S. and around the world that might have an appetite for Bitcoin-based annuities through just a 1035 exchange.
So there's a lot of products that life insurance companies bring to market.
And when the life insurance industry shows up in the Bitcoin economy, you know that it's really maturing and that the adults are finally in the room.
Yeah, for sure.
I hear you there.
How would you describe the ethos of Meanwhile?
We have an amazing culture.
we're a team of over 20 now i was employee number 10 in february of 2025 now we're over 20 we are
trying to be lean using ai as much as possible we want to do what traditional life insurance
companies do with a thousand people but with a hundred people and we all have seen you know we've
raised two rounds this year that have been great we've gotten a lot of feedback i you know do
podcasts and speak at conferences and and um the feedback i get is always wow this is a brilliant
product it makes so much sense i i love all of it it's such a smart way to put your bitcoin
the way you get yield is so clever no risk there's just there's a lot of uh positive momentum
and i think our our my colleagues are all we're all on the same page that this is such a great
company with an amazing vision we're the only ones that do what we do there's no competition
at least not yet. Of course, we expect there will be competition. But yeah, you know, we have a big
first mover advantage. And we're, we're very fortunate to have some of our like investors,
like Apollo, Bain, and all the others and Northwestern Mutual behind us. So and they're
really big helps too. Yeah, no, I could see that. Is your wife orange pills? What does she think of
meanwhile She loves it This is actually her studio It called the chat room in Miami Beach she in like the media world but a lot of her clients and podcast clients are in crypto as well and um she been with me since 2014 and has obviously seen the ups and downs and the
roller coasters and at one point was like you should go into fintech and give up crypto because
oh my god it's crashing but she fully gets it uh she owns bitcoin her parents own bitcoin her
siblings on Bitcoin. I mean, like I've orange pilled everyone in my life for the last 12 years.
And she loves that this company makes a lot of sense that when I explain what we do, I mean,
you would think Bitcoin denominator life insurance, well, this is going to be a doozy. But
I think we do a pretty good job of having simplified the product to be able to explain it
in really layman's terms so that anyone can understand it. Like I can make you understand
life insurance and Bitcoin and tax advantage growth and repo and all these things, I think
we could do it in a pretty succinct and easy to understand way, which allows people that are not
experts in our field to level with you and understand what you're doing and how it works
and say, it's not too complicated. I'll sign up for it. Why not?
Yeah, that makes total sense. I have term life insurance. I now want Bitcoin denominated whole
life insurance. That's definitely a game changer. I think that one thing that is really key here
is for people that with Bitcoin, a lot of our policyholders don't think of this as life
insurance. They think of this as a product that gives you yield, that allows you to monetize your
Bitcoin without paying taxes, that allows you to pass on your Bitcoin to your beneficiaries,
your family one day, tax-free, seamlessly, without having to leave a treasure map of
private keys and ledgers and safes and safety deposit boxes. And it happens to take the form
of life insurance. And I think that's the key here is that we're not selling you life insurance
as much as we're selling you. No, let me take it back. We're not selling you life insurance.
We're helping you with your Bitcoin journey. Yeah, I can see that. And everyone kind of needs
help on the Bitcoin journey. It is a sovereign sort of self-owned journey, this personal
responsibility, but we all learn from each other. And there are new things coming out all the time
that are helpful and, you know, really kind of get us along the way here. And people are looking for,
I'm sure, liquidity. We're trying to figure out what they should borrow against, whether they
should sell, how they should manage it. So this has been very helpful. I'm sure we'll throw a link
in the show notes, but where can people go to find out more about Meanwhile? Yeah, go to
meanwhile.bm. We'll definitely give you a custom link for you for the show notes.
meanwhile.bm that's our website you can reach out to me jason at meanwhile.bm bm stands for
bermuda and i'll be happy to talk to you uh and and educate you and answer questions you might have
um this has been a pleasure and i really appreciate uh your time and bitcoin matrix has always been a
podcast i've been listening to for for a while so great to be on here yeah well thank you for coming
on the show and breaking this all down for us i love what meanwhile is doing what you and zach
are doing. So thank you so much for all the work you've been putting in. I really appreciate it.
This has been so dope. Thank you very much. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the
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