We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC237: Bitcoin & the Insurance Industry w/ Garrett Johnston (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Garrett Johnston shares why Bitcoin—not crypto—should be the foundation for insurance innovation. We explore regulatory friction, risk evolution, and strategic adoption for carriers and corporates.... IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 04:57 - How digital asset risk profiles evolve as companies scale 16:09 - The case for Bitcoin in insurance company treasuries 16:15 - Why Bitcoin enhances risk-adjusted returns in institutional portfolios 21:39 - Why current regulatory frameworks hinder BTC adoption 21:54 - How NAIC rules classify BTC as a non-admitted asset 22:07 - The importance of state-by-state education and reform 30:28 - Gaps in current insurance coverage for Bitcoin-native businesses 45:03 -Why “Bitcoin not crypto” is critical in traditional insurance circles 47:12 - ESG misconceptions about Bitcoin in insurance contexts 48:26 - Game theory behind state-level regulatory adoption (e.g., NH SBR) 49:39 - AI’s emerging role in insurance and supply chain risk analysis Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Garrett's ⁠X Account⁠. Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Premium Feed⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. NEW TO THE SHOW? Join the exclusive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Mastermind Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. Follow our official social media accounts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X (Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bitcoin Fundamentals Starter Packs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Finance Tool⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy exclusive perks from our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠favorite Apps and Services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get smarter about valuing businesses in just a few minutes each week through our newsletter, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best business podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sponsors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Simple Mining HardBlock Human Rights Foundation Linkedin Talent Solutions Netsuite Shopify Vanta Abundant Mines Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On this week's show, I have Garrett Johnston joining me to talk about one of the most overlooked corners of Bitcoin's adoption, and that's the insurance industry. Garrett has worked in some of the largest insurance brokerages in the world and brings a unique perspective on why Bitcoin isn't just a speculative asset, but a risk management tool the entire industry needs to understand. We talk about solvency rules, admitted versus non-admitted assets, why most digital asset policies are still missing the mark, and how Bitcoin could play a
Starting point is 00:00:35 central role in transforming legacy balance sheets. All right. So with all that said, let's jump right into the interview with Mr. Garrett Johnston. Celebrating 10 years, you are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. I'm here with Garrett. Man, I'm excited to have this conversation because I get to go back into some of my Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett roots, as we're covering some of this. So welcome to the show, Garrett. Great to be here, Preston. Hey, so you're in insurance.
Starting point is 00:01:20 And for me, when I'm looking at Bitcoin and I'm looking at the entire insurance industry, I've been holding my head like this for years for a very long time because I can see how much capital is just sitting in the wings. And because of how the bond market is performed for four decades, I just think so many people in insurance have just been lulled to sleep. And they're totally missing this massive future decade, maybe multi-decade trend that they really got to wake up and understand in order to protect themselves, protect the people that they're insuring. And it, of course, comes back to Bitcoin. And there's nobody better to have this conversation than you. So give people
Starting point is 00:02:02 a background on yourself, Garrett, and why you're the right guy to have this conversation. Yeah. So, Garrett Johnston, I am basically a 25-year insurance guy. I started out really on the underwriting side. So in the commercial insurance world, you have kind of two buckets. Do you have the insurance carriers? So that thing from the Lloyds of London to the AIGs of the world, you have insurance brokers who kind of similar to getting your mortgage, a loan broker, goes out in shops and structures the deal for you. And those brokers interact. with the clients. So I started out really as a traditional financial institutions underwriter, and one of the large U.S. carriers ended up running one of the offices on the West Coast for them
Starting point is 00:02:44 and their FI practice. And then recently I joined a firm called Marsh, which Marsh is the largest insurance broker globally. For people who are not familiar with insurance, kind of think of them as like the black rock of the insurance broker world. Pretty much every Fortune 1000 company, there's a relationship we have with them. So the spread and the reach that I get to have in my position is very broad-brushed and very wide-cast net. From a personal standpoint, I was a traditional insurance guy, did that personally really kind of went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole 2019, 2020, COVID, kind of really got me that conviction, had my kind of moment of truth from like, maybe it's get out of insurance once that Bitcoin
Starting point is 00:03:21 conviction really hit in. And I wrestled with that for a little bit and then ultimately decided, at the end of the day, Bitcoin needs all of us with our various backgrounds, right? So there's a number of people out there on the podcast circuit with great backgrounds that are not Bitcoin native that are doing what they have brought in their experience. So that's really where I settled up. I'm a father too. So when I think of like the long-term game, your time preference changes as you get into Bitcoin, I can do a lot more for Bitcoin as an industry, staying in my very kind of traditional,
Starting point is 00:03:51 be outminded ecosystem of insurance. But what can I do to be a bridge builder, a developer? And that was in 2020. And to your point, insurance is notoriously slow. It's notoriously careful because they do ultimately need to be careful because they are the backstop. I first started in the industry in 1999. So my first market event was the dot-com bust, buildup and bust.
Starting point is 00:04:17 So I would say the crypto winter we went through a few years back to me felt very similar leading up to and coming down of the dot-com bus. And then obviously, recently, everything started to shift, right? So administrative headwinds prior administration to administrative tailwinds. And now the floodgates are kind of opening or the resistance dominoes are all falling apart. Right. So I really play at that intersection between there are all these builders out there that as they scale are going to need to start thinking a little bit more corporately. and the risk get bigger, the targets on their back get bigger.
Starting point is 00:04:57 How do you use insurance as part of your risk matrix? At the end of the day, insurance is just a tool. It's not a catch-all solution. I tell most clients that are scaling, like, risk is coming at you, whether you insured or not, it's not a function of you can't make risk go away. You can just choose how to deal with this. You can accept it on your own balance sheet. You can offload it through a third party's balance sheet.
Starting point is 00:05:18 That, in essence, is what insurance is. And that's kind of where I sit today. So kind of at that intersection within a very, very, very, large corporation that does insurance. We also have sister companies that are some of the largest investment consultants to pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. So there's a very interesting orange-pilling kind of dynamic within that avenue. And then we have a consulting firm that is essentially like a McKinsey style, less about insurance, more about what-put strategy. So that's where I sit today. Perfect. That's perfect. What I want to do for the audience is just kind of help them understand
Starting point is 00:05:49 Why Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, they were, Geico was their company. When you look at the engine of Berkshire and how they were able to just amass so much buying power through the decades, at the heart of that was this idea of investing the float of the insurance company. And when you look at GEICO and you look at the size of this quote unquote float, so like for people listening, what is the float? These are unearned premiums. So when you take out an insurance policy and you say, I need a $1,000 policy for X, Y, and Z. You put that $1,000 on deposit, and Warren would take this money inside a GEICO, and he would invest this, and you can invest it in very specific things that aren't super risky. But based on the environmental setup, the U.S. Treasury market being sky high with yields, and those yields kept going down for years, he could take that, he could take those premiums, he could actually buy long-dated U.S. bonds because they fit a very specific. terminology that was quote unquote safe, and it was through this period of time leading up to COVID, you can make a ton of money with just the changing interest rates with owning long-dated
Starting point is 00:07:01 U.S. treasuries through their bonds through this period of time. And you do this for 40 years and interest rates keep going down. You can see how he's taking all this capital that's set aside for potential payouts, and he's just making a ton of money on the change and the market price of those bonds. So that was the environment. That was the environment. That was a the flywheel or the main engine of Berkshire Hathaway for all these years. And now all of a sudden, things have changed. The math is a little bit different. The environmental setup is, and anybody who wants to question this, they can go look at Silicon Valley Bank and they were sitting on a bunch of long dated bonds and they blew up. And the reason why is because interest rates are coming
Starting point is 00:07:41 up when you're sitting on bonds with a lot of duration. Guess what? The price goes down. And those are major impacts. So now if you're an insurance company, now you understand why this conversation that we're about to have is so vital for people in the insurance industry to fully grasp because if interest rates are on a trend change, a multi-decade trend change, and you're sitting on long duration debt like you have for 40 years straight, because you made a bunch of money doing that with all this float, maybe there's an issue. Maybe we have to rethink the quote unquote risk of sitting on that type of asset. So, Garrett, did I simplify that or explain it in a way that you think is appropriately characterized there? What am I missing? Yeah, I'll add some color around it to put it more
Starting point is 00:08:29 kind of in the insurance camp. So again, to your point, insurance in many ways, is just all of us from an auto insurance perspective, we're paying in our premiums each month, but none of us are collecting claims each month. So you're putting money in, you have to hold on to it, hopefully invested, make some kind of return for those payouts down the road. So for all of kind of the macro people in Bitcoin who definitely tend to be macro focus, duration exists within portfolios of insurance capital. Depending on the product you have, the duration changes. So very rough frame out. If we just keep auto insurance as a good example, the physical damage, so like a fender bender, that's short duration, right? As soon as I rear end Preston on the freeway, we know that we
Starting point is 00:09:14 got to go get our car fixed if it's a fixed cost. But if I injure Preston's neck and it may result in back surgery 10 years down the road, that would be the longer duration piece of it. There's a whole spectrum of duration, right? There's property insurance. There's reinsurance, which reinsures the insurers. There's cat bonds. So there's stuff where the duration is carriers need to keep pretty much cash like and be ready to pay. And then there's super long duration. Like life insurance is a perfect example. So like some of the firms that are doing Bitcoin denominated life insurance, they're using that duration aspect and coupling it with Bitcoin. So back to how kind of the insurance community, in my chair, I'm constantly having discussions with clients and carriers
Starting point is 00:09:59 on this intersection of inflation and risk. And so you have, we take casualty heavy So like automobile liability workers comp stuff where the duration is usually four plus years long between when the event occurs and sometimes the payout develops on the back end. So that's kind of your float. That's your duration. So the halving cycle. Exactly. So very oversimplifying it.
Starting point is 00:10:22 But if you're investing mostly in bonds, let's just call it a 4% yield. And inflation, let's just say, is running at 7. You're melting away 3% per year. The other dynamic that carriers also have to layer over that is this term, they kind of refer to as social inflation. And that is this concept that jury verdicts are getting more and more dislocated from reality. So the art of most insurance companies is they have to take the million dollars they get in from various people's premium and hope that there's enough of that million dollars with
Starting point is 00:10:55 inflation, et cetera, that in five years time, they've earned a return up to say 110. million to payout dollar equivalent purchasing power of those claims. These runaway jury verdicts have been a problem for five plus 10 plus years in the system where an actuary inside an insurance company, that's the person who has to map out dollars today versus payouts tomorrow and how do you bridge that divide of enough money in the banks to pay the claims? Those people really struggle with, well, how do you do that when you pencil out a back injury claim at a million dollars if it goes to jury trial, but the jury rewards $150 million. And that is the reality of these insurers live in. So the severity within the duration is what the social inflation piece is. Now carriers have to
Starting point is 00:11:41 deal with, let's just call it 7% top line nominal inflation plus social inflation. So they really got to perform, call it 15% year over year returns to even keep up with that. If they don't, then their only choice is they pass the premiums down to the clients. So it's all connected from a standpoint of insurance rates go up in many, many ways driven by top line nominal inflation, but then the social inflation aspect around it as well. Most of these companies are in cash and cash-like equivalents. So treasuries and short-term securities, they need Bitcoin. Like at the end of the day, they need Bitcoin, right? When you look at some of those charts of they need to make sure they have cash on hand to pay claims, but they've got to create
Starting point is 00:12:27 that yield to keep pace with just this melting ice cube of inflation and social inflation. So if you go to a lot of companies, they might have a 10% allocation. It's mostly cash in the treasuries, but they might have a 10% allocation to say alternative risks. That could be hedge funds, private equity, reits, etc. Jared, before you go forward, I think it's really important to just pause because somebody that hears you say they need Bitcoin, they might not necessarily be able to really kind of piece together why you're saying that at that moment. moment. I suspect, and I want you to say whether I'm on target here, but when you're looking
Starting point is 00:13:02 at the growth rate of your expenses, of what you're paying out, and the rate of that, and then you're looking at the printing that's happening with the M2 growth rate, and then you're looking at where you guys can put capital and what the return profile is across the board, it's all underneath of the growth rate of your expenses that you guys are realizing and seeing, and also just the money printing that you're seeing. And so you're saying there's nowhere we can take these premiums without blowing out our prices and losing all of our customers to competitors that aren't adjusting their prices higher.
Starting point is 00:13:37 And that's a whole other important talking point in insurance, is if you keep your rates low, you're going to retain customers, but they don't realize that the real risk is that the premiums might not be there for the cost of the claims into the future, because they're not going to be realized for, call it five years or more. So, like, this is a major issue that you're looking at from a systemic standpoint across the board for the entire industry. And you're saying, I'm looking at these rates of expenses and it's far exceeding anything we can take the capital and plug it into that's going to at least sustain or
Starting point is 00:14:09 grow with that expense blowout. Is that properly characterized? Yes. Yeah. And I'll frame it another way. Like, it's not uncommon for a large client that we're going to renewal and renewal is usually full-month policies of each year you're having this discussion, if you assume that their exposure is completely static, oftentimes the carriers are like, well, we're starting at plus five, plus 10% rate increase just to account for social inflation and top-line inflation. Forget your risk profile, forget losses. This is just the starting point. Then have you had losses? Have you not had losses? We can adjust from there. But that's where the inflation dynamic is really problematic. And this social risk that you're talking about is not like a linear step. It is, it's accelerating, I'm assuming, as far as the cost going up.
Starting point is 00:14:56 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for the most part, it is super lumpy, right? And it's jurisdictional, right? So certain states, there's a reason for anybody that's moved across state lines, right? That oftentimes your homeowners and your auto insurance, even though you as a driver have not changed, changed quite a bit. Right. So you've got jurisdictional. So there are maybe five states out there that are kind of the outliers of if you go to a jury trial in those states and your insurance carrier, chances of you getting it lit up with a pretty large settlement is hot. And others are a little more friendly that way. So they have to bake that all end of the pie, right? And at the end of the day, they're not going to get there with treasuries. They're not going to get there with bonds. They've got to kind of juice those returns, but they're going to catch-22 because the stock and trade of any insurance company is solidancy.
Starting point is 00:15:46 we're there for the long run, like we're boring by design so that we are there when stuff goes bad, right? And that's where, again, I think there's this massive learning gap between the Bitcoin community and the insurance community and where a Bitcoin treasury strategy can make a material difference in the, particularly the longer your duration, the better. And as we all kind of know in Bitcoin space, over a rolling four-year period, nothing out performs Bitcoin. And I'll say this directionally, you might have tighter numbers, Preston, but 98% cash, 2% Bitcoin over duration outperforms the SMP. That might be a little bit plus or minus a percentage, but it's close. In the past like four years, I think it's underperforms
Starting point is 00:16:31 slightly, but it's close. And I think the thing that's really alarming to somebody that's never heard that before, I'm just going to restate it, 2% Bitcoin, 98% cash. And you're in the ballpark of S&P 500 performance over any four-year holding period. And go run the numbers. Again, in the last four years, it's slightly underperformed at with 2% Bitcoin and 98% cash. But you're close. And I guess this gets to your point of, I think what you're saying is you don't need a lot of Bitcoin sitting there in the float or even, I don't even think you're necessarily saying that it has to be the float. It could just be the retained earnings of earned premiums to make the company healthy enough in the long term that they have some type of exposure to Bitcoin. I think that's probably
Starting point is 00:17:15 a much more conservative way to frame it. But I'm curious, do you think it should actually be in the float or is this retained earnings that we're talking about? Honestly, I think it should be in both. When I think about it where the insurance community needs to have kind of the dot connecting on where Bitcoin plays in, is this kind of, it's a little dated, but it's still what I run into all the time is Bitcoin's too volatile, right? So let's just bump it up and say 95% cash, 5% Bitcoin, right? Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right, I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer.
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Starting point is 00:21:46 com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show. Can I just say, the irony of that statement and insurance for me is just, beyond hilarious because you talk about how volatile and lumpy events are happening before somebody and you would think that this would just be so obvious to anybody in insurance that it managed risk by position size. The truth of it is I think the reality is, and I find this on all sorts of large institutional clients, not necessarily insurance company, not necessarily Bitcoin,
Starting point is 00:22:22 but they've been doing it for 30 years the same way. And so you get it. this kind of ossification of your mental model, right? And you're unwilling to, and you hear crypto and you still have maybe FTX dose in the background telling you that this is rat poison, etc. And that's where like for me, I think it's just, you just need to put those aside and just look at the math. And what I always tell people like, this is not Wall Street math. This is like second grade numerator denominator, math. And when you look at and just let the math do, the talking, as you well know, like, it is beyond compelling. Then there's all these wrinkles and layers to the information divide. So if you're an insurance company and you're already, let's say,
Starting point is 00:23:10 95% treasuries and long-dated bonds, and maybe you try to juice those returns with, let's just say, private equity. Well, what are the average terms of a private equity, right? It's usually like it's a minimum four-year lockup. There's all sorts of fees. It's very volatile. but it's also very, very illiquid. And then that gets me over to like the regulatory realities of where insurance and you sit there and you're kind of like, okay, we can do better as an industry if we think through the map. So within, again, if you're back to the regulators, the regulators rightly so are their ultimate
Starting point is 00:23:47 goal from an insurance regulatory standpoint is to make sure we have sound, safe, stable, and liquid insurance companies because they're protecting the public good. We should all support that. That's a good thing. We should lean into that. But then again, back to that second grade math, when you look at some of the definitions, those will get into a little bit of accounting into the weeds, but most public companies are on generally accepted accounting for some gaps.
Starting point is 00:24:12 That's not how the insurance companies work. Insurance companies are on a statutory financial basis, which means basically the NAIC, which is a government entity, they determine what statutory financial rules. They kind of is the gap of the insurance world. And what's interesting in there is from a solvency calculation standpoint, you have admitted and non-admitted assets. So I'm oversimplifying it for ease. But in its core, the definition of an admitted asset is what is used to calculate your
Starting point is 00:24:44 solvency ratio, which gives you, that is your stock and trade, your credit rating with the state insurance commissioners. And insurance is regulated at the state level, not the federal levels. So there's another like whackable discussion within that. But again, back to private equity in Bitcoin being too risky, Google the definition of like, what is an admitted asset from a statutory capital surplus standpoint? It needs to be not volatile. It needs to be highly liquid.
Starting point is 00:25:11 It needs to be of a certain size. Like those are kind of those three pillars. So the irony, again, with Bitcoin is so you're telling me as a current regulatory framework that you can buy 10% allocation. into XYZ private equity firm, lock your cash up illiquid for four plus years, right? And you put the other stuff on treasuries, which again is the, we all know the risk-free rate, but you have counterparty. Like, it's not risk-free, but they're fine with that.
Starting point is 00:25:42 But if you were to take that same 95% cash, 5% Bitcoin, Bitcoin's considered a non-admitted asset currently. So that's one thing from a regulatory, if I have my regulatory like wand in this space, I I would ask at the regulatory level that we need to incorporate digital assets within the framework of admitted, non-admitted assets. And this is what the NAIC you're saying? NAIC determines the rules on the definition, but then each state insurance commissioner actually determines what the carriers can do, and they're the ones that kind of review
Starting point is 00:26:16 solvency. So, again, like a 24-7 asset that is $2 trillion in liquid. that you can panic sell on a Friday night or Saturday morning, as it like to say, you cannot do that with private equity, right? The liquidity and volatility, Bitcoin is volatile, right? On itself, denominated in dollars, but when you bake it into the pie, and you've done some good work on this, too, you show like the sharp ratios improve, the actual volatility of a portfolio, not 100% Bitcoin, but just doing a single digit to low double digit allocation,
Starting point is 00:26:53 actually improve safety and soundness at the balance sheet level. And that is just completely lost on the insurance community right now. There's a handful of markets like outside the U.S. that, whether it's London, whether it's Bermuda, but you're 98% of the insurance community. Bitcoin's too volatile. And I just, that's a message I want to work on over the next several years. Garrett, this is the thing that I would think would just really blow anybody's mind in the insurance industry is looking at micro strategy as an example.
Starting point is 00:27:22 he started doing a Bitcoin strategy in 2020. Here we are five years later. He's outperformed in video with his stock's underlying common stocks performance. But this is what really blows the mind. He had about 500 million of investable, marketable securities. He was saying it was just cash, which was probably just when US treasuries. But he took that 500 million. And today, I think it's close to $55 billion in five years. And here's the real point that I think is lost, okay, twofold. First, the company's probably only made $300 to $400 million in that time frame. Okay. So help me understand how you go from a company that has a liquid treasury on the balance sheet of $500 million to $55 billion, and you only made $400 million throughout that period of time.
Starting point is 00:28:14 That's the first point. The second point that I would say is it's all liquid. This $55 billion isn't like it's locked up in commercial real estate. This is super liquid. He could sell it Saturday morning anytime he wants in super high quantities of volume of what he could sell on the snap of a finger to come up with, oh, I need a billion. Oh, here, I can get that on a Saturday morning kind of thing, which is crazy. Right.
Starting point is 00:28:41 And I just think that's lost, completely lost on the market as to what that means. The third thing I would say is the financial health. So somebody would be looking at this and be like, oh, yeah, well, he's super levered. And his company's health has deteriorated because he did all this. But here's the thing you really need to look into. His financial health ratios, right, debt to equity, like all of these things, I'm pretty sure they've all improved. coverage ratio, you name it, just come up with whatever financial health ratio you want to look at.
Starting point is 00:29:16 Coverage ratio, acid tests, like all of it, okay? And go look at his balance sheet. And I think if you look at 2020 to 2025, it's improved on every one of these metrics. So you have to ask yourself, if you're in insurance and you're all about reducing risk, adding liquidity, growing your retained earning so that you can prepare for a rainy day, you would think that this would be just wrecking people's worlds because what I just described should make no sense to anybody, which is your signal to dig deeper and try to understand what in the world is happening over there. Part of what I love about when you plug Bitcoin into just about anything, it's typically
Starting point is 00:29:57 often a win-win, a crowd. It's usually you don't find a lot of losers in the bargain of Bitcoin. So you take, let's again go back to auto. That's just it. I can't name any, right? To your point, I can't name any. Lose win scenarios. And just to kind of demonstrate your point, people would be like, oh, well, let's look at
Starting point is 00:30:17 his convertible debt holders. They probably got ripped off. Or let's look at his preferred stock holders. They're probably getting ripped off. And the answer is, no, they're the best performing convertible debt issuance since he's done them. It's the best preferred stock issuance as far as a year. yield to the health ratios of the business, because that's how you have to look at it, that you
Starting point is 00:30:38 can find on the market. And so to your point, it's a win-win for everybody participating on both sides of it. So I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it's such an important point. I think part of, like, what's interesting to watch the micro-strategy story from an insurance capital perspective is things like the convertibles and the preferred stock, because back to that admitted, not admitted, Like, if you're an insurance company today holding Spot Bitcoin, you can technically do it, but it's going to be considered a not admitted asset. You're going to have to post additional collateral. So, like, it's economically not viable. But you can buy a convertible bond, and that's allowed, right? You could even buy MSTR if you wanted to. And, like, again, sailors out there saying
Starting point is 00:31:21 his goal is MSTR should be a one and a half X Bitcoin. So he's trying to do one and a half X the volatility of Spot Bitcoin. spot Bitcoin should be allowed in my mind into the insurance capital structure. One, because forget doing Bitcoin-denominated insurance because we'll get to it in a second. If you're just a traditional fund manager or you're managing the portfolio risk of these insurance companies and all you care about is trying to outpace inflation and these lost development factors, which is the actuarial kind of metric you plug in of a dollar today needs to be $1.25, $1.50, depending on the duration. then, how do you get there? You're slipping away just being in Treasury. So, coin just gives
Starting point is 00:32:02 you that the beauty of it, it gives you that juice to get the actuarial models to come down. The insurance company makes more money, and then guess what? You and I going out to renew our auto insurance. If you're doing it right, if your loss triangles and everything are greatering against Bitcoin, even at it, let's just say, two to five percent allocation, it provides stability for auto insurance rates, which again, what I love about that is it helps the person making $20,000 a year, almost more on a percentage of discretionary income than the person making $150 or $250 or a Wall Street cut. Right?
Starting point is 00:32:37 So that to me is what I love. It rises all tides. It makes companies more profitable. And then they can pass those savings down to. And guess what does that turn into? If you're an executive at one of these big insurance companies, what does that actually turn into, you being able to offer better prices. More customers. Hello. They're like, wake up, you going out and I don't even think they have to do anything too bold to the numbers
Starting point is 00:33:03 that we were talking about. The bar is crazy low. One thing I will, as somebody has been in this business for 25 plus years, when you sit down and talk to most insurance executives, at the end of the day, they're targeting, they're trying to make a consistent 10 to 12 percent return on investment. If they can do that over time, they're generally happy, their shareholders are happy, their boards happy. They are not trying to price gouge typically. You always have your fringe cases, but the vast majority of players are trying to be fair. But you're in this really lumpy dysfunctional system with a unit of account that is just
Starting point is 00:33:40 completely running away from you at the printing of money. They are at a strategic disadvantage, right? So at what point do you get on the life raft? And again, one to two percent to start, the more I think you just see those numbers play out, the conviction will grow. And everybody went at that point. And that's, we are still so incredibly early. And then when you get into the insurance space, it is, it's crazy how early we still are.
Starting point is 00:34:07 I wanted it to touch on, you had a coin denominated insurance real quick. Oh, okay. Yeah. Let's cover that. Go ahead. Yeah. So the reality is there have been some markets, most of them outside the U.S. currently that are starting to do Bitcoin-denominated insurance policies. I am not a believer that
Starting point is 00:34:24 we need to just go full-bore 100% Bitcoin-denominated insurance because at the end of the day, an insurance transaction, you want to match your liabilities with your assets to your liabilities from a risk exposure of a building to the denominated policy. So a Bitcoin miner to me is a very good use case of the duality of these products. So if you take a large Bitcoin miner, and they just get, one of their facilities gets taken out, right? There's going to be an element of the insurance piece where they need to rebuild. They're going to probably want to pay the contractor in fiat or the contractor is going to require fiat.
Starting point is 00:34:59 So there are elements of, even for, say, a Bitcoin miner, they are going to prefer a U.S. dollar-denominated insurance to match, let's say, the reconstruction of the building. But then the other part is what happens if it takes a year for that facility to come back up? And they go a year without mining Bitcoin, right? And let's just say that's, they're averaging 50 Bitcoin a month, right? So all of a sudden, you've got a pretty substantial number. Well, if you have that denominated in U.S. dollars and Bitcoin rips up, then your protection is cratering against the underlying asset, right? So there should be in my mind, and that's called business interruption insurance in the insurance world. The business interruption piece,
Starting point is 00:35:39 I think is more appropriately denominated in Bitcoin, because you're essentially, taking the exchange rate risk off the table of U.S.D. Bitcoin. Similar dynamics in custody, right? If you're insuring Bitcoin, a U.S. denominated, whether you're buying $100 million or $500 million or a billion of U.S. denominated insurance, when Bitcoin doubles, well, your insurance stack just basically got cut in half, right, from a asset liability matching. So that, to me, is future state, but we need to be building it now to be ready for those types of policies down the road. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination.
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Starting point is 00:39:18 Carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income fund fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right, back to the show. In short, if you have a Bitcoin liability that's uncovered, prepare to be wrecked, right? Prepare to be wrecked. And there's companies that have gone out there and had Bitcoin liabilities and didn't cover them and just thought that, well, this is going to be fine.
Starting point is 00:39:49 And they realize that there's no better way to destroy yourself than to think that that's possible. The irony for me is if you just invert that idea and you put Bitcoin as assets on your balance sheet, it should have the exact opposite effect, you would think. And that's exactly what we're seeing with our micro-stratics. So you can arbitrage to deposit it. That's right. Right. Because like right now, a USD-denominated insurance company is going to be one of the problems is like the exchange rate risk of Bitcoin, of how volatile is it like, how do you peg your policy limit to appropriately encapsulate the risk when the underlying asset is so incredibly volatile? Well, yeah, do that in Bitcoin
Starting point is 00:40:29 and it takes it out. I started out in. in the bank underwriting world. So like, I would be the guy that would sit at like a Silicon Valley bank and be like, okay, what are your controls? What are your risks? And to have coverage for crime or theft of funds, I would set the terms and pricing for something like that. One thing, and this is kind of maybe an ask to the Bitcoin community as there's part of what I want to get out there is just that building together of there's a lot that I think Tradfai has learned over the years from an insurance and risk management standpoint that Bitcoin builders and Bitcoin Treasury companies can learn from. But on the flip side, there are a lot of
Starting point is 00:41:05 risk vectors at the traditional insurance side that in some ways, the technology of Bitcoin can mitigate. So I'll just give you a case study on that. When I was a bank underwriter in my early days, the senior guys would always say, look, you've got 20 different insuring clauses on a banker's blanket bond. That's kind of your crime policy that every U.S. bank pretty much has. 80% of all losses come from the very first insuring clause, which is employee dishonesty, right? So it's going to be a guy in your loan department, a guy in your AP department that's siphying out funds, usually small amounts overtime debt, 20 grand a month, and all of a sudden you do it for 10 years, you've got a big claim under you know.
Starting point is 00:41:44 So how do you manage those controls in the banking environment? Well, you have audit procedures. You have some like very basic things that like make sure everybody in your audit department takes a two-week vacation because they can't cover the tracks if they're out of the office for two weeks. that's an area where Bitcoin has some really unique potential to be far better than what insurance underwriting can do. So back free Bitcoin as an underwriter, I'd be like, well, what are your audit controls? Are you training your staff? Like, the breakdown usually you can train your staff, but if the human element is weak,
Starting point is 00:42:15 the weak link in the chain is what creates the fraud. So you take some of the cool things that are going on in the Bitcoin development space from like custody stuff. So you take whether it's things like time locks, right, or these what I will kind of kind of call it quasi smart contract element of Bitcoin. You can actually completely erase the threat vector of some of the things in traditional, say, bank custody underwriting through the timeline. That's just one example, right? You can remove with like multi-institutional custody. We need to remove some of the solvency. We need to explain this time lock business for people in the insurance industry that might not be big winners. Just give them a real quick rundown on
Starting point is 00:42:59 that. Yeah, I'll take a stab at it and you tell me, because you're a little more technically minded on that than I am. So, time lock is in its most simplest form. You can pre-program. And this would be like, if for the insurance community, they would call this like social engineering, where I call up your bank person and try to impersonate you and then I've got your address, I've got your social, et cetera. If there's a time lock fraud at the bank, the traditional level is a function of typically speed and like volume. Like, The loudest people at customer service are usually the fraudsters. It's not the patient people.
Starting point is 00:43:28 So, time locks, for example, can slow down the process of a fishing attack, right? Or some kind of like wrench attack that even if you did try to do a wrench attack, you've got a time lock, there's nothing you can do with this. So it eliminates some of the checks and balances. And what I love about it, it takes the human element out of it. It's cryptographically sound. So you can't just have a breakdown of the. Audit manager should have but didn't.
Starting point is 00:43:57 It makes that, so it's better than audit controls in certain frameworks. Not everything, but certain ones, and that is very much for the most part, not understood, appreciated at the underwriting level of the reality is a custodian in Bitcoin pays a lot more per million of limit of insurance than a traditional custodian. But I could sit there and argue, well, in many ways, the way less risk. protections are stronger cryptographically and we can prove them as such versus 100%. Let me show you the logs of our training, of our auditude. So I would just describe it to add to your point.
Starting point is 00:44:36 So there's a company called Anchor Watch. They are at the forefront of all this. They're using a thing called Mnisccript, which really gives programmability to the custodial solution. And anybody can go out there, use Mnisccript and conduct this type of way of managing your custody. just to kind of give you an idea. Let's say you were the CFO of the company. Let's say I was the CFO and the CEO. And for us to move funds out of, let's say, there's a billion dollar somewhere.
Starting point is 00:45:05 And we set up this wallet that it requires our three key signatures in order to get it out. And it specifies that if you and me went there and tried to do just the two keys, it's not going to work. The vault requires these three specific keys in order to open it. Or you could make the vault two of three. Or you could even say, at this. specific time into the future, there's going to be a third keyhole that opens up for this particular person or disappears at this particular time into the future. Like all of these things can be adjusted. And when you think about the controllability of that, in a digital vault,
Starting point is 00:45:38 that becomes super insanely powerful. And anybody in the world can audit whether the coins are sitting there and who signed to get them out and which key was used to get it out. Like all of these things are part of the mix. And for somebody, insurance has never heard some of these things, you can now understand why Garrett is saying that he thinks it's more secure than a traditional physical vault where a key opens it and not necessarily a specific, encryptically verifiable key that was assigned to a very specific person to open it. Yeah, exactly. And I think there's so many Anchor Watch's product is a really important kind of step in the right direction. I think things like proof of reserves.
Starting point is 00:46:22 That river is a really good, because again, like, that is just better than as a bank underwriter. What I would do is I would go to the FDIC's website and I would pull up the financial. That's all. Silicon Valley Bank. Yeah. And I would go and I would analyze the tier one capital ratio and all of these things. But I'm doing it six months in the rare view mirror because it's simply reported financials. And so you have to like analyze versus nowadays, as you could go on a lot of these.
Starting point is 00:46:49 digital platforms if they're on the Bitcoin blockchain. And again, like, you know exactly where somebody like a river stands 24-7, like a micro strategy. I think they update their metrics every 15 seconds now, right? So you think of the other world that I spent most of my first part of the career in was directors and officers insurance. So that is when the board of directors, the CEO gets sued for some kind of, you didn't run the company, right? It's usually a shareholder suit or a competitor suit that comes in. But corporate business. governance is a big, or lack thereof, is a big driver in the D&O world. So as an underwriter in that space, you kind of are always in the room. You're kind of reporting, I would sit between
Starting point is 00:47:31 kind of the CFO function and the general counsel function. But pretty much any lawsuit you see from one company to a next, there's an insurance policy that's picking up those suits against the company or its directors. That's a, we call it DNO policy. Again, this is where Bitcoin is It is so fascinating how quickly it's moving. So at what point are we going to go from free Bitcoin, if you did not manage your balance sheet, right? And we in the micro strategy examples of their outperformance compared to their peers in the MagSettle, at what point does it look like corporate malfeasance or you are not putting shareholder
Starting point is 00:48:11 interests first by not adopting Bitcoin Treasury strategy? because the returns are speaking for themselves, right? And we're not there yet, but like, there will be a time where if you are not putting some form of Bitcoin on your treasury as a publicly traded company, you're opening yourself up to lawsuits from shareholders, maybe activist shareholders. Like some of these companies that are coming out, like, they're not being shy about the fact that they're going to look for underperforming companies, flip them and put a treasury strategy into them.
Starting point is 00:48:43 So there's elements of kind of activist shareholders. And insurance companies are keenly aware of problems of shareholder activism. And when the board is not from a fiduciary duty standpoint, not looking after shareholder value. The end of the day, shareholder value is the final decision point for a board public company board member is what is the best interest of the shareholder period. Gary, when I look at where we sit right now, I loved your highlight earlier about we have a terminology issue with the NAIC and there are insurance company's abilities to invest unearned premiums. But I genuinely don't know this. I would imagine that if it's earned premiums and it's retained earnings at that point, the company can go and invest in as much risk as they want.
Starting point is 00:49:30 Or I would suspect that's the case. I just don't know. Is that the case? I believe so. Somebody will probably call us out on that, but I believe that's the case. Yeah. I mean, that seems like that would be the case, but I genuinely just don't know. Okay. So that's, if somebody from the insurance industry is listening to this and they have that type of authority, I guess that's your actionable step today is you take your retained earnings and you start maybe allocating into this in order to just give yourself a larger health buffer. And then I think the longer term approach and strategy is that we really have to figure out how to get the right people at the NAC that have the authority to start making these terminology adjust. And do you know if any of that conversation has started taking place with the current administration or? Yeah, I mean, the nice part is I know that a lot of the insurance components sit under Treasury.
Starting point is 00:50:21 And Treasury has been reaching out to several firms getting their opinion on kind of what that would take. So this is the NIC stuff is really Garrett Johnson, personal opinion, not necessarily a company I work for. But I do think the nice part is is there's a lot of movement there of every kind of sub-department. within Capitol Hill is fairly clearly aligned on, we may not know what we need to do, but we want to do our best to align with the mandate of Trump, which essentially is make the U.S. the preferred venue for digital assets, period. So I personally, within the digital asset framework, like, I'm a Bitcoiner, so I tend to focus on Bitcoin. And I also see the strategic reserves. Those are all Bitcoin related. When you see like the big movements in the
Starting point is 00:51:08 space, most of it is within Bitcoin versus the broader digital assets. So it's like most of these things in government and regulation, it takes time, but it's education. So to me, I think folks like the NAIC or the state level insurance commissioner is like, you're not going to win them on a deep dive into Bitcoin. You've got to take their framework, which is a good framework of like, they want safety and soundness. They want good solvent carriers that. are responsible players out there to the public for the public good. We all want that. I spend a lot of time in my position of reinterpreting the same point but in different language, depending on the audience I'm talking to. So I'm often talking at the boardroom level of publicly traded
Starting point is 00:51:55 companies and I talk to them very differently about insurance than I would my insurance counterparts because that's all we do. So we can go very deep, very quick. You have to speak what what matters to the board about insurance. You need to speak to regulators about what they care about, but that's where I feel like we're on the same page, we just don't realize it. Yeah. The insurance commissioners want safety and soundness. Bitcoin does that. It actually does it better than just about any of the asset. How do we help lead the education divide? And there's a lot of like, whether the guy's at BTI or there's so many good people in the Bitcoin space that are good at articulating the message. We just got to get them in the same room
Starting point is 00:52:35 with the insurance community. Don't you think the biggest education stopgap that exists today is that Bitcoin is different than crypto? Like, if you're going to start anywhere with regulators, I think you start right there and explain why. And you seem to agree with this. So give them the why if one of these people would be listening to the show and they hear us say this.
Starting point is 00:52:57 Why do you say Bitcoin's different than crypto and everything else? Fundamentally, Bitcoin is the only one that is completely decentralized. does not have a kind of control group behind it that can change the code. It also really, again, like when you look at all of the talk from the top down, they talk about digital assets broadly, but they really act on Bitcoin. Everything's being acted on in a Bitcoin framework or stable coins. But again, like to me, Bitcoin and stable coins are kind of intertwined in many ways as far as stable coins need Bitcoin to kind of help dollar dominance of that standpoint. But where a key difference is between the two is the issuer, right? When you get into stable coins and you're going to see a
Starting point is 00:53:39 pretty substantial push here in the coming year with banks and pushing stable coins and things like that. The thing you've got to remember is Bitcoin has no issuer. There's not like I need a tether or a circle or you name it J.P. Morgan coin that's behind that, that I have to trust whether they actually got the treasuries backing up the token that they're riding on top of the treasury. And that's the core difference. And I can see that argument cropping up in the insurance space really quickly, which is, all right, maybe we'll play around with stable coins, but not Bitcoin. But what they're failing to realize is the issuer is still the risk in this equation
Starting point is 00:54:16 that they've completely discounted and not even thought about. And again, like most of the non-Bitcoin crypto assets, they are not a proof of work. So, when you look much more broadly, when we look at the power transition discussions we have at the national level, energy independence, all of that kind of stuff, the Bitcoin miners getting into the AI, HPC compute. A lot of where I see in my chair too is somebody like a marsh where I work, like, we have 30-year guys who've done nothing but oil and gas. We have 30-year guys who've done nothing but data center buildouts.
Starting point is 00:54:50 We have 30-year people that have done nothing but like energy credits, carbon credits. Those things are all quickly bleeding into each other. And then there's a corporate governance wrapper if you're public that goes within that, right? And it's all subject to the regulatory framework. So I think where I sit now, when you kind of look at this is not a multi-month, this is a multi-year, if not multi-decade journey, we've got to start at the regulatory, get the definitions right? And so there's been so much see change in a positive way with the new administration on that. It feels like we're going to get there. And then we're seeing it already, right, just the last couple weeks, the amount of gold rush of these companies basically
Starting point is 00:55:30 taking the micro strategy playbook and creating these Bitcoin treasury plays, that seems to just be accelerating. I mean, where I sit here today, kind of almost middle of May, it is hard to keep pace with the daily announcements of stuff going on between Bitcoin, traditional finance, public company markets. It's just accelerating. But they all need insurance, right? So 100%. There's a dislocation there that to the extent I can help connect those dots and be a bridge, that's really kind of my passion there. And you know what? With this much capital, liquid, immediately saleable capital that a strategy has, they can start
Starting point is 00:56:06 to underwrite their own risks with $55 billion on their books. What I find fascinating is the game theory of how this plays out over five to 10 years. Yes. Because if you look at the fairly low end, let's call it 20, 29% cagger on Bitcoin, and you apply that out 5, 10 years, like micro-strategy's balance sheet. It's going to be bigger than Berkshires. It's going to be bigger than Allianz, which is technically the largest one globally right now. So it'll be fascinating to see where those things play out over time.
Starting point is 00:56:43 100%. Bitcoin, I think Bitcoin has to go to $1.1.1 million and then strategies balance sheet, which again, if it's all Bitcoin, highly liquid. 10x from here. It exceeds the largest insurance company's balance sheet globally. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:56:56 And one thing I would say, if you're a listener from the insurance industry and some of these ideas we're talking about are brand new and you're like, there's no way. The beauty today is you got AI. You can just go into GROC or you can go to Open AI and type in anything we're saying here. Look it up for yourself. I highly encourage you to just not believe what we're telling you, but to go to do your own research and troubleshoot any of these ideas. And you might even want to ask AI what it thinks one of the best performing assets will be in the next 10 years and see what it says about Bitcoin. We'll see what it knows. I think you might be surprised with what you find out.
Starting point is 00:57:30 Garrett, if you want to leave anything with people from the insurance industry from this conversation, what are your main, like what's your main takeaway? What is it that you really want to accomplish with this? Yeah, for the people within insurance, I would just really encourage everybody to be just curious and reach out. Like, that is probably the thing that has been most beneficial to me over the last several years. One, most of my free time, I'm listening to some kind of Bitcoin-oriented podcast. And then if I hear something interesting, I will reach out to that person. And I will say, I just want to talk to you. I want to get to know you. I want to understand where you're coming from. I want to share ideas. And then through that, like, that is where 90% of my learning comes from.
Starting point is 00:58:11 is I hear a podcast, I read something on X, and I reach out to that person just be like, I'd really enjoyed what you said. I thought, very interesting. Can we connect and just share ideas? And then through that, the learning happens, the connections happen, and the networking happens. So to the insurance community, there are just a plethora of people like Preston that are just really solid at getting you kind of the macro and kind of just an outside looks in perspective on some of this stuff.
Starting point is 00:58:37 And then to the Bitcoin companies, my biggest recommendation, the biggest pitfall I see when I talked a lot of the builders in this space is over emphasis on the kind of theology that sometimes gets the best of us in the Bitcoin space, that Bitcoin fixes everything. I think Bitcoin fundamentally changes kind of the calculus. But the reality is a lot of the well-worn paths of Tradfai insurance risk management need to be incorporated and intersected in the right way. So again, some of those things we talked about as far as. underwriting issues being mitigated by the tech, let's acknowledge that and let's not waste our
Starting point is 00:59:12 time worrying about a threat factor that the tech takes care of. But let's also not ignore the scaling problems and just the reality. So like the joke I tell a lot of people is that if I already come to you, Preston, then I want to be healthy. And you've got this whole idea of what I should do. But the only thing I want to focus on is doing arm curls every morning. Like, you're going to sit there and say, well, what about sleep? What about your diet? What about leg strength? It's a lot more than just one thing issue. And I think in the Bitcoin like development space, lean on us who've been in kind of the traditional side for a lot, and particularly for somebody like me who's a Bitcoin or like, I'm certainly not interested in selling dysfunctional insurance and overly priced
Starting point is 00:59:53 products down a Bitcoin or so like I really want to find that right intersection of where everything's building. And to the extent I can introduce you to people within the community, figure out a path forward that might be artly traditional with a different twist on it, it. That's the part of like insurance that I love is working on the new things. It's not the day-to-day insurance per se. It's the building and then figure out risk problem. I love it. If people are listening and they want to reach out to you, LinkedIn, Twitter, what do you use? Yes. I'm on both. I will say generally insurance folks tend to hang out on LinkedIn and Bitcoin folks hang out on X, but I'm on both on LinkedIn. I think it's just Garrett Johnson and Gerard
Starting point is 01:00:31 O'Johnster. Twitter. It's at Garrett OJ is my handle or it's garrette.j. at marsh.com or is my email. So yeah, we'd love to connect with anybody and everybody on intersections in those space. We'll have links in the show notes and I hope you guys reach out to Garrett and get things going because I think that this is really important. I think the insurance industry needs this, desperately needs this. I'm sure they're looking at the numbers and saying, where do we put the capital, right? Like based on these expense blowouts that we're looking at and the changes. I hope people reach out to you, Garrett. And thank you so much. What a fun conversation and I learned a ton and would love to have more chats like this with you in the future.
Starting point is 01:01:11 Sure. Thanks for having me, Preston. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Bitcoin Fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investors Podcasts. Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

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