What Bitcoin Did - THE FUTURE OF BITCOIN CUSTODY w/ Becca Rubenfeld

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Becca Rubenfeld is the co-founder and COO of Anchor Watch. In this episode, we discuss Becca’s journey from corporate America to Bitcoin, Anchor Watch’s Trident Vault, the role of MiniScript in securing Bitcoin, the role of Lloyd’s of London, and why insured custody is the future. We also get into the challenges of startup life, raising money in a bear market, and what it takes to insure all the Bitcoin. MASSIVE THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN: https://www.iren.com/ RIVER: https://river.com/wbd CASA: https://casa.io/ LEDGER: https://www.ledger.com/

So our goal is just to insure all the Bitcoin. What your paying for should be an absolute guarantee that we will not mess up. And if we do mess up, whether it's our fault or somebody else's, you will be made whole or you will be taken care of. The idea is like, no, no, like insured custody, it absolutely has to happen. Like, in order for this asset to mature and be accepted by a broader swath, of society and institutional money. It is, in our opinion, a foregone conclusion. And it will become the norm.

It's very cool. It's been one of the most talked about companies in Bitcoin like of recent times for me. It's coming up in almost every interview, which is very, very cool to see because I think the first time I heard about this, we were at Bitcoin Commons and I saw you and Rob, and you were kind of giving me a lowdown. And obviously things have changed quite a lot since then.

But we'll get into everything. But I want to start, Becca, we've been trying to make this show happen for so long. It's been years we've talked about doing this. And I think your background is really interesting because you kind of came from corporate America world to Bitcoin. So can we get into that? Explain what you used to do and how you got to where you are now. Yeah.

So, yeah, like you said, I've spent my entire career in corporate America up until this point. So the first 10 years of my career, I was a fashion merchant. So, you know, working for Target and American Eagle Outfitters, the teen clothing store. And a merchant does two things. You're actually kind of choosing the clothing that goes into the stores, so either designing it or collaborating with designers and influencing the actual styles. But then you're also building the financial plans and setting pricing and doing profitability and figuring out how many you need to order. So it's actually a very nice mix. of creativity and kind of data-driven performance,

which suited me very well. And then I went to Starbucks. So then I spent the last 10 years of my career at Starbucks corporate until I joined Rob with Anchor Watch. And I went there expecting to do the exact same thing except coffee, right? So I expected to kind of be selecting the food. I knew I was going into the food department. And so I expected to kind of have this end-to-end ownership where you're both influencing what goes into the bakery case or into the food case, but also doing the finances.

And what I found is that Starbucks is organized much more like a manufacturing company. So the roles were very siloed. And so I ended up in this very kind of supply chain heavy role where it was really more about moving around the goods. and that was a little restrictive for me. So I just enjoyed the creativity of a broader role. So from there, I actually kind of architected a new role that didn't exist previously. And it was launching all the strange like test programs and M&A concept stores, random ideas. from the senior innovation team, from Howard Schultz, like, you know, that they wanted to try, you know, putting blueberries through the frozen supply chain because they wanted to get a particular product to a certain part of the country and just go figure it out. And so I was very much in this startup environment, but within broader Starbucks.

So that was, that was really fun. So for three years, I was really just launching just item after item and project after project and, you know, sometimes dozens at once. And it definitely gave me a really good sense of how customers are going to receive something. So I utilize that in product design even now. That if you put something out, you start to get a sense before you even launch something. if you think it will do well, and then really quickly you get some customer feedback, even just, you know, a few tidbits here and there, and you can really quickly start to calibrate your own understanding of what this broad customer base will want.

And from there, so if it worked well, then we would hand it over to the business and they would work on scaling it. And if it didn't work well, we would kill it fast. And so it was just tons and tons of reps. And it was this amazing opportunity to work with senior leadership and, you know, be inspired by kind of that level of thought and a lot of creativity that was happening there because the strength of the innovation team is very high. It's a high caliber of employee that is kind of doing that sort of work. And so that was really amazing. and then I did a little bit of a hodgepodge.

I did beverage development for a year. Are you the reason that Starbucks went from being a coffee shop to a sugar dealer then? That was already well in place. But one of the drinks I worked on is still in stores now. I actually did beverage development for the roastery brand. It's this ultra-premium brand that has these special locations around the world. and everything is more bespoke and handmade and really high-quality ingredients. And so that's the brand I did food and beverage development for.

And I developed a drink called the Pistachio Rose Latte, which was kind of inspired by Middle East drinks. And that drinks grandchild is now in core stores. So every year they put out a pistachio latte. which is a few iterations away from mine. But mostly, though, within the beverage space, I spent a lot of free time becoming what's called a coffee master. I went through the training and was certified as a quality cue grader. And so, you know, when you think about coffee tastings

and people doing cuppings where they have all the cups of coffee lined up and they're doing it with a spoon, I did all that kind of stuff. And that was amazing because I got to lead coffee tastings for, you know, dignitaries and military leaders and celebrities and athletes and everybody who came through the office. The office was a very happening place. You would always, you know, do a double take and see somebody well-known walking through. So I got lots of fun doing that. And then I wrapped up my time at Starbucks, actually going the extreme opposite direction. and I, along with a couple of counterparts, built and then ran the largest fintech program in the company. So complete bureaucracy, nothing like startups at all.

It orchestrated $20 billion of outbound spend. So all the way the company spends money. So whether you're buying the Sharpies to write on a cup or a $500 million Microsoft contract, both of those two extremes. They've got different systems, different procedures, different authorizations. And so there were about 10,000 employees that spent money, 16,000 suppliers that receive money and orchestrating all of that. And that was probably the hardest job I've ever had because I was effectively implementing bureaucracy, which nobody likes. And so I had this, unfortunate role of being the person who was responsible to go out to all these people, these thousands of people and telling them that there was a new way of doing business and I had to do it. And while until Anchor Watch, I had never sold anything officially, that definitely is the closest I got to sales because, you know, I'd have to get out there

to people at all different levels, you know, from store managers all the way up to you know, the CEO and explain that, you know, this was the way they're going to do business now. And I had to work on my sales skills to convince them to get on board through whatever means necessary. So, and then I wrapped it up there and joined Anchor Watch. Have I ever told you that Starbucks is the only job that I've been fired from? No. What did you do to get fired? So when I was like 16 or 17, I was working as a barista there. I'd probably been at Starbucks for like two weeks.

And you obviously get like a discount code if you work that. Right. And I gave one, I gave my code to one of my friends at school. There was a coffee shop right across the road from school. It gave maybe two or three days until the entire school was using my discount code. And I quickly got called in and let go. Immediately. No warning on that one.

Just like you're out of here. Yeah, it was a bit too soon to start doing things like that, I think. Probably. Congrats. Yeah, well, it's the only job so far that I've been sacked from. So that's really cool. So you, like, ran the remit there at Starbucks. You did all sorts of things.

I did, yeah. So how in a, where does Bitcoin fit in? When did you find Bitcoin? So I found Bitcoin in 2019. So I was still at Starbucks, still working away, and a friend that I traded stock tips with just texted me. And he was like, hey, Bitcoin is like way down right now. You should probably pick some up.

And, you know, we threw equities, tips at each other all the time. So I pulled open the chart. I could see why he was telling me that based on where the price was. And so I opened a Robin Hood account and I made a buy. And so for 2019, it was pretty range-bound. And I was just swing-trading it. So I was just, you know, fiat farming, making a little. little bit per trade, thought I was doing pretty well. And then, as happens to many people that

were that trade, the price took off in 2019. And it jumped something like 40% over the couple of days or something. And I was out of the trade on about two-thirds of what I had been swing trading. And so, you know, I kind of shrugged it off, you know, whatever. Like, too bad. I missed that one. But it'll come back down. It'll come back down. Don't worry. And it didn't come back down. And so then 2020, COVID and quarantine started, and the app clubhouse came out. And I got an invitation to jump on the clubhouse. So I did that. And it was a little bit of a dead zone, except there were these Bitcoin rooms. So hopped in a Bitcoin room. And really, I was just hoping to get trading alpha. That's that's definitely all I was looking for.

But the guys in the room, I didn't know who they were at the time, but, you know, they're all names that were familiar with now. And so... Who would that have been, like American Hoddle and... American Hoddle, Jun Seth, NBK, Jimmy Song, Jason Williams, Jay Gould, Brad Mills, Bruce Fenton. I mean, so many, so many. Like the who's who of Bitcoin Twitter, they were. where at that time, they were all on Clubhouse.

And they, a lot of them already knew each other from Twitter, from the forums. And they had found each other on Clubhouse. And I think they were super excited because it was the first time these audio apps had popped up. And they were excited to talk about Bitcoin so freely and using, you know, using words verbally. So I think they were really enjoying it. And they had the chance to evangelize a little bit. They had a ready audience of thousands and thousands of people who were listening in. I think some of the clubs had, you know, hundreds of thousands of people on any given day.

Yeah, it was huge for that time. Yeah. It was this moment in time very much because of COVID, you know, people were starved for human interaction. And so those guys, you know, these are guys who run companies and their core debt. and mining guys, you know, they were still spending 12 and 18 hours a day on this app. So I started, I was just listening in, right? I was waiting for trading alpha and it became really obvious to me just how smart they were. You know, I didn't know who they were, but just I'm always attracted to intelligence.

And it was just very clear that not only was the topic actually much more interesting than I had realized coming at it only from trading. But these particular group of guys, which Rob was a part of, were just immensely intelligence. And so I stuck around. And so while I was home, you know, working from this room, working on Starbucks, I would have clubhouse on in the background. Just for background noise, kind of replace the cubicle chatter. and eventually I ended up on stage. So actually I got pulled up on stage because people were saying stupid stuff about women.

And I was waiting, if you can believe it, yeah. I was waiting for others to kind of jump in and be like, hey now, hey. And nobody was doing that. And I was like, oh, man, it's going to have to be me, huh? So I ended up, I raised my little hand. then I jumped up on stage and I put up the deces a little bit and I jumped into the fray, you know, half for fun, right? Like for the enjoyment of sparring.

And but since then I was on stage when the conversation would turn back to Bitcoin, now I had the opportunity to ask questions. So I think it was this, you know, lightning in a bottle opportunity to get this personalized master class to Bitcoin because I could ask questions. You know, I had learned a little bit over the month or two I had been listening, and now I had the opportunity to be like, I still don't, I still don't understand why, like, everybody doesn't just turn on minors and just like, you know, why everybody doesn't just do it. And so somebody would be like, oh, good question. Well, that's, you know, that's where the difficulty adjustment comes in

and would explain it. And if I didn't get something immediately, I could just say, like, I think I get it, but that it's not quite clicking. And somebody else could then jump in and be like, here, let me rephrase that for you. And they would give me maybe a different analogy. And so just really quickly, I learned that my own pace, which was fast, and I got orange filled really quickly. And actually, that's where I met Rob as well. And one of the things that always stood out about Rob was how well he can explain technical subjects to Normies. And he's, he's amazing at pulling analogies out, you know, just really creative, but very easy to understand analogies. And so he definitely stood out in that way. But that's how I got Orange Pilled.

I then was working with Brad Mills, a prolific angel and OG. And so I kind of worked on the side with him with his venture portfolio and had an opportunity to see. What were you doing that? I was just helping to manage his portfolio. So if he was a fund, you could say I was partner or a GP, but he's not a fund. He's just Brad. But yeah, I mean, he, like I said, he's a prolific investor and he's an amazing supporter of early stage startup. But when you have dozens of investments, there's actually a lot of work involved and, you know, both doing deal flow, but then also. once you have made investments, you know, making yourself available for advice. And, you know,

I was probably pretty new on anything Bitcoin-related advice, but I certainly have lots of experience running a business and thinking about things and how you scale and, you know, I was able to give advice in terms of that. And so I was doing that just as a side hustle while I was still at Starbucks. And that was cool because I got to see all the new companies that were hopping up in the last cycle. So I had a good idea of who the builders were and what people were working on and my own kind of thoughts in terms of what made a builder who I had a lot of faith could actually follow through and get the company up and running and profitable and and viable for the long term and others who maybe not so much.

So that was a really good lens. And then from there, actually kind of weaves into the Anchor Watch story. What Bitcoin did is brought to you by our lead sponsor and massive legends, Iron, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy. Iron are not just powering the Bitcoin network. They're also providing cutting edge computing resources for AI, all backed by renewable energy. We've been working with their founders Dan and Will for quite some time now

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To open an account, go to river.com forward slash WBD and earn up to $100 in Bitcoin when you buy. That's r-I-V-E-R-com forward-slash W-B-D. Yeah, how did that go from Rob nerding out on Clubhouse to starting a business with him? Well, so, I mean, it also started on very much on Clubhouse. So we call ourselves a Clubhouse company because we met each other on Clubhouse. All our first angel investors were, you know, amongst those guys that I mentioned and others. but we raised our first million plus from Clubhouse and some of our team is from Clubhouse.

So definitely the origin story is from that moment and time. But specifically what was happening was actually Brad and American Hoddle and JunSeth and John Fecori and Jay Gould and some of these other guys were exploring the idea of doing a Bitcoin accelerator. They saw the need for it in the space, and they were thinking about funding one and backing one. And I already had two jobs, right? I was doing Starbucks and supporting Brad. And so I knew I couldn't run it. Like, there's no way I had capacity to you. So I was like, guys, who's actually going to run the accelerator?

And I suggested Rob because of his technical prowess and his unique ability. to coach, I think, founders and really cover the full spectrum of what a founder needs. And so we had a group meeting and they were talking about doing the accelerator. And so Rob came to a meeting and, you know, showed up very well and impressed the guys. But then that night or the next night, we were chatting on Clubhouse, just normal conversation, like socially chatting. And the idea came up for insurance. And so I was there, but I wasn't super actively participating in the conversation, just kind of listening and working. And I remember Gene Seth in particular was talking about how, you know, maybe there's a lot of Bitcoin businesses

that exist, but they don't really need to exist, at least for Bitcoin to be successful, but one that really does need to exist is insurance. Like every mature asset class needs insurance. And so the idea was born, you know, out of this conversation, and it started as self-custody insurance. So if you have a multi-sig, if you have a two of three, you should be able to get insurance on that. And so then Rob was ideating on how you would do that.

Like, if it's true self-custody, how would you even prove that somebody owns the Bitcoin they say they do when they want to buy the insurance? And so Rob was thinking about it and realized, like, in fairly short order, he could build an attestation process. And we could at least prove that at the point of signing up, somebody, in fact, has the Bitcoin or is able to control this Bitcoin that they're claiming is theirs. Without jumping ahead too much, this was before the idea of miniscript. coming to this atoll, is that right? Way before, like a year, a year and change before. So it was just a very basic attestation. That was the original tech, was it was going to be self-custody, insurance, and Robb knew

how to do the attestation. So I think first American Hoddle and Rob, who had been friends, I think, for a long time, you know, they were talking about it. And Hoddle recommended to Rob, he's like, Rob, like, you should actually just do this. This is a really good idea. You know, we'll back you. Like, I'll help whip up the angel round for you.

You know, you should really be doing this. Like, you're so talented, like, you should be building on Bitcoin. And so Hoddle threw in the first check. And Jason Williams, I think same day, threw in second check. And from there, they really quickly kind of whipped up support. And so, you know, within, a couple of days, they had a few hundred thousand of commitments to back Rob and this insurance idea. The accelerator was dead now. They were more interested in backing Rob's insurance thing

versus the accelerator that excited them more. And I actually first got involved because Hoddle called me and he's like, hey, we kind of forgot to tell you that the accelerator, like, we're, yeah, we're not going to do that. But, you know, we don't want to, like, leave you out of this. If you want to invest and be on the cap table with us, you know, you're welcome to. One of the coolest things about Hoddle that people don't understand is he loves to see people with. Totally. Oh, man, he's such, he's an amazing cheerleader. Like, he's, yeah, he's been absolutely our, our most, you know, consistent cheerleader and supporter. through this process, from being the very first check and helping Rob raise the angel around to to being there during, you know, during the hard times and the stressful times and always

being there as kind of a trusted advisor and trusted friend who wants the best for the company and for us and for Bitcoin. Yeah, he's actually a very special one that we're lucky to have. So I threw in a check initially. So that was my entry into Anchor Watch, was an investor, and it was my first Angel check. But I was excited to do it. I thought Rob was amazing. I thought the idea was sound. Insurance is a great business.

I had actually just recently been licensed to sling insurance. I was going to do yet another side hustle, which I've always done. And so I was just, I thought it was great. So I invested first and then Rob immediately was starting to code up the MVP. So he was building the attestation. And since I had been working with Brad and seeing all the portfolio companies coming through and doing their pitches, I had a good idea of what was needed to do a startup, right? So I told Rob, I was like, hey, I know you're working on your MVP, but just these are the things I see. So you'll need a pitch deck, of course. You should probably get a pro forma on some projections. You know, you obviously need to learn a lot about insurance and that kind of thing. And I gave him a list of, you know, five things that he should probably have on his radar. And he was so fingers on keyboard building the MVP that I was like, here, like, I can do a pro forma, I can do a pitch deck. I can do those very quickly. So here, I'll just help. I invested. I want you to be successful. I want my investment to be successful. So I dove in. And for that first week, I was just helping him out. And I ended up doing two all-nighters, which I hadn't done since school. And Rob and I were working very closely and talking all day, every day. And it was just a lot of fun. It was exciting. I thought the more I do in and researched the insurance aspect and what was needed to start an insurance company.

I just thought it was really interesting. And I had been doing this very challenging fintech program at Starbucks for a few years. And if I didn't do Anchor Watch, I would have been looking for my next move within Starbucks just because it was time. And so I just took the opportunity and I asked Rob, you know, if it was something that he would consider that I would be open to leaving Starbucks and doing Anchor Watch with him full time. So maybe a week or so after I invested, I ended up joining on as co-founder. Oh, wow. So it was a quick turnaround. What did the people at Starbucks think when you told them what you were doing? Do they think you were mad? Yes, completely still kind of do because they're also not by and large they're not very familiar with venture-backed

startups or startup life in general most of them have spent their career uh maybe they have MBAs and then went to corporate America or maybe straight from their bachelors um but this whole life is uh very outside of what they're familiar with and so initially yeah they thought i was totally bonkers. Like Bitcoin weird, leaving an amazing, top-to-your company weird, you know, going to raise money, weird. Like everything just seemed stressful to them and a little crazy. And honestly, I think they kind of held that opinion until, you know, really time was passing and we were kind of proving out and achieving milestones and, you know, raising money successfully and then achieving Lloyds of London coverholder status and now launching and

having the opportunity to talk more about the business. And now, three years later, I'm getting a lot more positive feedback. But it was strange. Like, for example, you know, on LinkedIn, which everybody's favorite social media, but on LinkedIn, right, it's like if I posted an internal promotion. Let's say I was promoted from a middle manager to a senior manager. And I put that on LinkedIn, I would have, you know, I don't know, 300 or 500 or 600 likes. And when I posted that I'm like, hey, I'm, I'm doing a startup. And it was like four. Oh no, back has lost a mind. Yeah. And just like, yeah. And the small amount of positive feedback I got was not from Starbucks. people. Like, it was very radio silence. And I think it's a little, you know, people look at it a little

suspiciously when you're leaving the path, right? And the familiar path. And so definitely a lot of side eye. And yeah, like I said, now I'm getting a lot more people reaching out and congratulating me and being generally supportive. But it took a while. That's so funny. Like, because to me, seems like a way cooler pathway. But was there like a culture shift or culture shock even going from working in like Starbucks in Seattle to being all in Bitcoin? Not one that I wasn't ready for. So I've always been a little irreverent.

And I was never, I never carried myself in a super proper manner even within the office. So I mean, I, that's why you fit in here. Yeah, a little bit, right? I mean, I remember when I was in a meeting about bananas, my first week at Starbucks. And it was, yeah, the meeting was literally about bananas. And so I thought it was appropriate to start singing a song about the cheek key to banana song about never putting your bananas in the refrigerator.

And I sang it to a group of, you know, 25 people and I was the new girl. And that's fine. Like, I thought it was funny. They thought it was funny that they were very confused by this. But, I mean, my AUM and my responsibility continued to increase over my years there. So I always kind of figured out how to push the boundaries of respectability to the point of being myself and always kind of navigated that fairly well. So then when I came over to this world, you know, on the Bitcoin side, there are no rules in terms of proper behavior.

On the insurance side, working with Lloyds of London, you know, there are still some constraints. But I'm very comfortable kind of code switching and jumping between those. And then in terms of work, like the actual workload, I mean, nothing, in my opinion, nothing can prepare you for startup life. I mean, absolutely nothing. It's, it's grueling, it's lonely. You know, people warns me about certain things, people who had done successful startups and scaled businesses, and some of them just they did it once, and it was a massive success, others who were serial entrepreneurs. And, you know, they would tell me, like, you know, people will let you down, and it's lonely. And you'll travel so much.

much. And you know, and almost everything I was warned about came to fruition, right? It is grueling. I am exhausted. People have let me down. You know, it is extremely lonely. It's extremely lonely. And that's hard sometimes, you know. My family is super supportive. But, you know, I don't get to see them that They live an hour away, but to go an hour and share a meal and then an hour back, you know, now that's taking a half day off work. And I just, I rarely can take a half day off work. So even with the supportive family, I spend a lot of time alone. And my social network has gone from being very heavily at the office where I got a lot of socializing in during the work day to, Now it's actually going to Bitcoin events, right? Yeah. But that's a funny thing in Bitcoin, isn't it? Because I obviously travel a lot as well.

And the travel, like, don't get me wrong, it does get hard. But at least everywhere you go, you're with friends. I think that's probably pretty unique in Bitcoin. I think so too. And it, you know, it took a while to get from, oh, this is some guy I've met once or twice to like, oh, no, this is my friend Danny. And really happy to see each other. And so now I look forward to them.

And that really is my social circle now. You know, I think one of the reasons that I was willing to do this is my son has grown. So my son's in his 20s. And so I think it's a good time to be able to dedicate myself to this. That I can say that, no, I really do wake up, start working from, the moment I wake up, at some point during the day, I try to take a, you know, a break and go to the gym or play tennis, maybe run an errand, but then I'm home and I pretty much work till bed. And I do that, you know, six, sometimes seven days a week. And so knowing my son was grown and I actually

have the ability to dedicate myself was one of the reasons I was willing to do it, because I wouldn't be kind of stepping back from my parenting responsibilities. And I still, I'm young enough that I still have a lot of energy to be able to do that. But this episode is brought to you by CASA, the leading Bitcoin self-custody solution. I've been using CASA for a few years at this point, and I can't recommend them enough. CASA have options for all Bitcoiners from a two of three multi-sig to a three of five and a private client option for absolute best in-class security. CASA also have an inheritance product which I've recently set up and it couldn't be easier. My inheritance plan has gone from a vague treasure map for my wife to a rock-solid plan that I have total confidence in.

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Ledger makes it simple to keep your assets protected. If you want to find out more, visit ledger.com and secure your Bitcoin today. That's LEDGER.com. So on the, you say, like, having run the start, startup's really challenging. And apart from that social aspect, what's been the hardest part? Because for most people, I think that would be raising money. But it doesn't seem like that's been a huge challenge for you guys. I actually like raising money. I think I'm unique. Maybe. Yeah, maybe because. But hey, in fairness, when we did our seed round, we did that in the depths of the bear.

So we were trying to raise money when Bitcoin was $16,000 and $20,000. And so even though people really, I think, liked us, they liked Rob, they liked me, they liked the story we were selling. But getting people to actually send their Bitcoin at that time was still very challenging. So, you know, we were very frugal and very kind of hand-to-mouth for a couple of years. which at the end of the day, I think, is a great muscle to have built because we continue to be frugal. And when we continue to raise money, we will continue to be frugal because we have now years of experience managing our treasury. So yeah, I mean, I enjoy, we believe in what we're building.

So when we're going around and pitching and telling the story and, you know, people will again and again tell us that. But, you know, they've never seen somebody so excited about insurance. And it's sincere. You know, the thing about insurance is that it's a capital market. And people don't really think of it. If you've only thought about insurance as a customer, as getting your auto policy or your homeowner's policy, you don't really have a need to go much deeper than that. But really, it's investment banking, right? These insurance companies have a pool of capital and they can invest. it in different companies or different programs, and they're assessing the risk and the expected profitability, and they're using, you know, they're balancing their own portfolio, and they're really choosing where to invest capital in each one of these programs in the hope of earning a return on the capital they invest. So it really is investment banking. And once I clicked that in my head, then, man, I thought it was fascinating. because I had unknowingly jumped into banking and finance.

And then the other part is that it's security, right? So we are actively keeping people safe. You know, we cover wrench attacks and all that. So we should we should do that though, because we've given the background of Anchor Watch, but give us the pitch now of what Anchor Watch is today. So what Anchor Watch is today is a combo insurance provider as well, as custody services provider. So currently, what we launched last month is insured custody if you use our platform. So we built a platform. We call it Trident Vault. And it is a cold storage Bitcoin

solution that is Bitcoin Native Tech and it uses something called Mnisccript. So I know Rob's been on and it has talked about it a little bit, but at the highest level, it lets us do a couple of things. It lets us do multi-sig of multi-sigs. So if you were going to be a customer, you would have your own unique multi-sig wallet, and we also have our multi-sig key set. And both of them are required signing or the Bitcoin won't move. And then the other thing are time walks. And people are a little more familiar with time walks. But what that means ultimately is we can program your vault that says, hey, on day one, here's how it behaves. It's your keys and our keys. But if something goes wrong, if you lose keys, if any number of catastrophes happen over time, there are different

ways to access the Bitcoin. So we built that and it really is the best in class for cold storage. It's the first major development in cold storage tech since Maltesig came out in I think 2013. So, you know, 10 years later, you know, now there's minisccript. And it's all Bitcoin native. And so we game-theoried out this vault design. So, you know, how keys are managed by the customer and by us, and we have recovery layers and these time locks. And so we very creatively designed a vault that really can protect the customer from nearly

everything, nearly everything. So when people are like, well, what if there's a tourniquet? NATO, and that happens at the same time as a wrench attack and, right? And so you can come up with all these scenarios, and we can answer all of them, right? And so there's then a few things that the tech can't protect you against, that just the nature of the Bitcoin tech, for example, can't really perfectly protect you against a very sophisticated wrench attack, right? And in fact, the tech can't protect you against us being a bad actor. Right. And so the places that you could conceivably poke holes in the tech are where we made sure that the insurance policy covers. So if you lose Bitcoin, so almost everywhere, we're able to say, look, even if that happened, you wouldn't lose your Bitcoin. So we're using the tech to protect you. But then in those situations where you would lose your Bitcoin, the insurance covers it.

So can we run through the scenario? So let's say someone walked in now, podcast. gun to my head and said, you've got to send some Bitcoin. Like, the fact that we can almost ignore the fact that I'm using your Trinand Vault and I have keys in different places. Like, let's say I insist to you or whoever that we sign this transaction, my Bitcoin's gone. What then happens on the insurance side? Yep. So, I mean, it's honestly, it's really straightforward.

You file a claim. So immediately, as soon as you're safe, you would call us or file a claim online, immediately, we're doing a couple of things. We're contacting Lloyds. We're also starting to track the stolen Bitcoin, right? So it's moved, but this is a public ledger. So we're tracking it. We're communicating with law enforcement. If we can get it frozen at an exchange, we're going to do that, right? So we're taking actions to try to mitigate the loss at the same time. We're starting the investigation. So in that case, we are communicating, again, with Lloyds, also the FBI, because this is a kidnapping situation.

There was a gun to your head, so it's serious. So the FBI is starting their investigation. And very quickly, it should become evidence to law enforcement, whether they are inclined to believe you or not. And so with insurance, that really is the threshold. is it more likely than not that this situation happened as the person is claiming? Or is there something concerning here that makes us think that it's attempted fraud? And ultimately, Lloyds will determine if the circumstances appear more likely than not

that this happened the way you're telling us that happened. And if so, then once they've made that determination, they will approve your claim. As soon as they approve it, it'll go to the payments team. and then you would be paid out. So there's this. And that's denominated at the like fiat price of the moment I lodged the claim. That's right. So these policies that we're launching with are dollar denominated policies.

And we get tons of questions about this. And Bitcoiners are a suspicious type, right? So we get questions and we're happy to field them all the time. So I like to use the analogy of fine art. I think it's the easiest to understand. So let's use that. Let's say you buy a painting and it's a million dollar painting. So at the time it's assessed, it's a million dollar painting, you buy a $1 million

insurance policy. So that's the amount of insurance you paid for is a million dollars. You don't cut off the corner of the painting to pay for it. If it gets lost, you get paid out in dollars. You don't get paid out in paintings, right? Because it's irreplaceable. And so then halfway through the year, let's say that particular, artist is super hot this year. The art market is thriving, and so that painting is now a $3 million

painting halfway through your insurance policy. Now you as the customer have a choice. You can either call your insurance agent and say, hey, art market's so hot right now. It's now a $3 million painting. I want to increase my insurance policy to $3 million. And then they would send you just a pro-rated bill for the additional insurance premium for the balance of your insurance. policy, you would pay that and now you've paid for a $3 million insurance policy, or we actually allow you to remain underinsured if you choose. And so you could say, look, I know it's a $3 million painting, but I'm comfortable with a million. That's enough that it kind of saves my family from complete catastrophic ruin. So I'm going to hang out to add a million for the rest of this year,

and I'll just be underinsured. And either of those is fine and they're your choice. So if the loss happened, it would be, you know, the fair market value of the Bitcoin at the time of the loss. So if you had the million dollar insurance policy, we do have a deductible. So customer, just like any property insurance, right? So you have a deductible if a claim is paid out. This is the haircut you take. And, you know, the purpose of that is to encourage customers to not be flippant with the responsibility of key management, and also it statistically reduces fraud attempts as well. So you can either choose a 10% deductible or a 25% deductible. Let's say you chose the 10% deductible. So you have a loss, you have a million dollar policy. Bitcoin is still worth a million dollars thereabouts.

When the loss happens, you are going to get a payout for 900,000. So the million dollars minus the 10% deductible, your payouts $900,000. If the Bitcoin has gone up in price, but you chose not to increase your policy, then you've still only paid for a million dollars of insurance, so that's what you have. So if the Bitcoin is worth a million and a half, you're still getting $900,000. One interesting thing, though, is on the downside. So the way a normal property insurance policy would work would be they would be the fair market value, and you would still get the deductible.

what we were able to convince Lloyd's of is, hey, this is a very volatile asset. We want to provide a good value to our customers. So if the value has gone down below your deductible amount, so let's say at the time of a loss, the Bitcoin is only worth $700,000, but you paid for the million dollar policy, then in that case, Lloyds will waive the deductible, which is cool. So in that case, we would pay you out your $700,000. And if you choose, you can take that $7,000. $1,700 straight to the exchange and make yourself whole in Bitcoin terms. And so I think going

through those examples are important because there's this misconception that we Lloyds are going to play games in terms of the duration. So they're like, oh, but you guys will stretch this out and, you know, it'll go on for years. So even if I get my $900,000 by the time you actually pay me out, you know, Bitcoin is going to be worth some huge amount. And, you know, you know, Bitcoin is going to be worth some huge amount and all have ended up getting a bad deal. And that's just coming from not knowing Lloyd. So Lloyd's is the oldest insurer in the world. They do the weird things. Like, that's what they're known for being willing to do these types of risks. And remember, because these are dollar denominated policies, they actually have zero incentive to play with time. The Bitcoin price is totally irrelevant

to them, right? Because ultimately, they don't, you know, whether it's two weeks later or a year later, if it's an approved claim, they just want that to make the decision and to get it off their books. So if it's an improved claim, they're going to make that decision very quickly, generally within a couple of weeks, just long enough for law enforcement to determine, you know, the circumstances and make sure kind of they understand what's going on. And as soon as then the claim is approved, it goes over to payment team that same day, generally. And so if a loss occurs, if it's straightforward, you know, we expect people to have their claims settled within just a couple of weeks. So there's a little price volatility risk, right, by the time you get your payments

and can go re-buy the Bitcoin with it. But it's limited to a short duration, and it could go your your way too, right? Like that price volatility could actually end up benefiting you. The interesting thing you said there is to do with the price volatility of Bitcoin and your coverage. Because like, for example, in your example of insuring artwork, that's not a super liquid market. Like we don't really know what the price of a piece of art is actually going to sell out. Whereas Bitcoin is very liquid. We know the price at any given moment. So would it be possible for you to implement something in the future where your policy follows the sort of spot price of Bitcoin without you having to go and constantly re-insure?

So there's a few different things that we can look at doing. And we definitely think about this stuff and how we want to take the company and future products. So one is we could do the exact same thing, but shorter duration policies, just so the volatility doesn't impact people as much. So, you know, we could have one-month policies or if you get really, you know, theoretical about it, you could have one-day policies or things like that. the reason that we started with a year policy is actually those time locks, it's actually a tech

limitation. The way those time locks work, at the end of the year, we actually need the customer to sign a transaction to effectively restart the clock on those time locks. And so if we have really short duration policies, then we're going to have to have customers go get their keys frequently and be very, very active in terms of accessing them. And that seemed like it was too much friction initially. The other thing, and I think maybe more interesting and where we will, I believe, head as an industry is Bitcoin-denominated policies.

So instead of a million-dollar policy, you have a 10-Bitcoin policy. And so when we get to that world, you're paying your premiums in Bitcoin. if you have a claim, you know, you would be paid out in Bitcoin. And now the Fiat exchange rate is irrelevant, right? Because it's all denominated in Bitcoin. On one side, I need to point out to people that you still are getting the amount of insurance you pay for in Fiat terms.

Because if you paid for a 10 Bitcoin policy and it cost you X SATs, at the time of signing up, those SATs were, were worth Y dollars, right? And halfway through the year, if Bitcoin has mooned, you know, you still have paid the same number of SATs, but you've locked up that much more equivalent in Fiat. So no matter what, you will get the amount of insurance you pay for, regardless of kind of how we're denominating. Now, in terms of why we didn't launch that way, it actually comes down to regulations. So the insurance companies cannot currently hold Bitcoin on the balance sheet without it impairing their balance sheet. So it is considered a non-admitted asset, which means they get zero credit for it on their balance sheet. So if they're going to hold a million dollars

worth of Bitcoin on the balance sheet to act as reserves, they have to dollar for dollar also back it with FIA, which means by definition. they're having their profit margin for any given program. So until that rule changes from insurance commissioners, state insurance commissioners, it's very unlikely that major insurers are going to use Bitcoin as the reserve asset. Now, some insurers are starting to show interest in holding Bitcoin, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're literally using it as a reserve asset where they're where they would be impaired. I think that will change in the future. But for the time being, when we were shopping this product with pre-customers early on, it was made very clear to us by

both large retail customers, so whales and OGs, as well as definitely commercial customers. So company treasuries, miners, mining pools, family offices, not only did they want just a good reinsurer, they wanted Lloyds. So the Lloyds of London brand and name is really, really important. And so what we decided is that we would launch with Lloyds, take advantage of the trust that comes with Lloyds and build our reputation with the Lloyd's backing. Do the dollar denominated policies, which again, they work very well. You just have to kind of think through the scenarios and accept that you get the amount of insurance you pay for. And if you want to increase it as the value of Bitcoin goes up, you can certainly just do that on our platform or with a phone call.

And over time, though, when either the regulations change or if we choose to, you can do Bitcoin denominated policies out of Bermuda. And we have a Bermuda entity. So whenever we're ready, we can do the work to turn that entity into a carrier and offer policies there. But we wouldn't have Lloyds behind us because, for the time being anyway, they don't hold Bitcoin. So what we would need to do is raise Bitcoin. We would probably do it via an insurance link security. So a regulated security, they can be equity based, like performance base or they can be debt based like a catastrophe bond. And we would raise Bitcoin from investors who want to underwrite the insurance risk. And so it's certainly not risk-free. They're literally underwriting insurance risk, but it's low-risk. And so it would be an

opportunity for, you know, investors to be able to earn Bitcoin-denominated yield by underwriting, you know, these policies. And, uh, the, uh, these, these policies. And, uh, That will be interesting over time because that's kind of an infinite flywheel. When you think about the amount of capacity, so in traditional insurance, there's only so many dollars in the insurance industry, right? So there's a big pie of dollars. And then within that pie, you know, a significant portion of it is property and casualty insurance. And then within that is a fairly small sliver, which is called Specie, which is fine art and jewelry and the like small precious articles. And we fall within that. And then within that, there's this tiny little sliver that's currently Bitcoin insurance, right?

And so there is ability for us to bring in more fiat to underwrite our policy. So as we grow, you know, Lloyd's has already, you know, shared that they will allow us to grow to actually a really significant level. But at some point, as the market cap of Bitcoin increases, at some point we will exhaust the amount of fiat that the industry is willing to invest in this one subset, right? Because they're not going to just do away with all homeowners policies just to allow the Bitcoin slice of the pie to get infinitely larger. And so as we eventually, this is years down the road, but, you know, maybe not that many years. You know, we will exhaust all that capital. When we go to Bitcoin denominated, it really is semi-infident because there will always be this appetite to earn, say, for low-risk yield, and then that will allow us to really support the full kind of global

demand for insurance. So that will be a very interesting development, both for us as a company and for the industry as it matures, I think, over the next five years. So I know, absolutely nothing about insurance, but even I've heard of Lloyds of London. Yeah. How hard was it for you to get such a sort of historic brand on board with this? I mean, it was somewhere between easy and incredibly difficult. I mean, it's almost the context. The context matters.

So I would say here, on the easy side, we should have started with Lloyds. Like we went out to the whole industry and we were talking to kind of all the name brand insurers who were all intellectually interested in what we were doing. But when it came down to actually signing the papers, you know, we'd get through the due diligence and they'd be like, man, this is so interesting, but we don't actually touch crypto. You'd be like, ah.

Whereas, you know, we should have just started with Lloyds because they, by reputation, are who is willing to do new and novel products. So once we kind of landed at Lloyd's and then found the right teams at Lloyds within Lloyds because, you know, it's this massive marketplace of insurance. We found the right syndicates who previously, they've already written some, you know, crypto policies, not our exact policy. We wrote ours for what we're doing. But they were actually pretty knowledgeable.

And so when you say they already do some, is that things like Coinbase custody have a tiny fraction of their Bitcoin is insured? Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. So, you know, Coinbase has a policy. It's a crime policy. So it's primarily covering the Bitcoin being lost because internal bad actors did something nefarious. So that's kind of the meat of their coverage. But in order to be willing to write that policy, Lloyds of London syndicates who are underwriting it, they had to dive into the tech. Right. So they needed to understand what, they were willing to ensure. And did they understand the miniscript side of it? Because I thought it was just Rob that understood that. Well, we definitely brought them on that journey.

So they understood here, they understood multisic. They understood cold storage and just custody. They understood cryptography. So, I mean, they had a pretty solid base. And then they even had an understanding of some more cultural things. So they, for example, they have underwritten some Cassatius coins. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, they definitely, the few crypto-bitcoin related policies that exist, they all pretty much came from Lloyd. So they did have this foundation. In terms of Mnisccript, though, that's definitely a journey we brought them on. So that, which was cool because Mnisccript, actually is why we have such large policies. So Coinbase was able to get a $350 million policy. I think BitGo has a $250 million policy. And for the most part, those policies are constrained in size

by being kind of the largest policy that these particular syndicates were willing to back for any one entity. So they're like, look, this is a large policy, and it is. $350 million is a large policy, right? And they're like, you know, that's the most that we are willing to do. And so if they want to go bigger, they have to get kind of more creative and bring in more and more insurers to try to assemble a larger policy. And so then the question is why could Anchor Wat get the ability in the

backing to write 100 million per customer, which is what we got. And the reason for that is manuscript and really bringing them through that journey. So what we were able to demonstrate with, you know, pictures, lots of pictures and diagrams and the code audits and all this kind of stuff is we were able to demonstrate how we were, are distributing risk, which is a core tenets of insurance itself, but at the protocol level. So we're able to say, hey, unlike one of these omnibus policies at a custodian, with our custody solution and the way we've constructed this vault, Danny has his own keys, and he's a required signer while he has an insurance policy with us.

And Anchor Watch is a required signer. And that mitigates all sorts of things. One of the things that mitigates is Anchor Watch messing up and having sort of some catastrophic loss because you are a signer. So that means if you have a loss on your vault, it's entirely unrelated to somebody else having a loss, even another Anchor Watch customer, because you have your private keys for your vault. And so effectively, it's kind of enhanced self-custody because the Bitcoin can't move without you. And so we were able to demonstrate that via miniscripts, every single Anchor Watch customer,

on this product is an independent risk that's not going to cause a widespread wipeout. I mean, first of all, that must be really cool to have kind of the validation from Lloyds of London that they kind of respect the tech that you guys have built to a degree where they trust you more than Coinbase. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't I don't even need to say it's that they trust us more than Coinbase. I think Coinbase, to be fair, has many, many years of kind of reputation in terms of not losing keys, right? But being able to bring them on that journey with us and demonstrate the tech and demonstrate why it's special and why it's unique was super exciting. I mean, just super exciting and very validating in terms of kind of our thought process.

And, you know, we, you know, Rob's been in Bitcoin since 2013. So he's not new to Bitcoin, but we're both relatively new to insurance and to be able to say, hey, we have this idea. We have the idea of how to actually do insurance better, right? So we're going to enforce this distribution of risk. Enforce it at the protocol level. So once your vault is set up, we can't cheat. We can't change the rules.

and to actually then use the cryptography that protects Bitcoin to back the insurance was super cool. And, you know, so we became a Lloyds of London coverholder. And just getting that status, that was really exciting. We're only the second crypto-related company to get coverholder status. And we're the only one in the world that can serve retail customers. So at the moment, we are absolutely the only way for customers to get direct access to insurance on Bitcoin and self-custody where they hold their own keys. That's not something that they can get anywhere else. And eventually there will be other cover holders.

I mean, we think the industry is going to mature. So we expect competitors. We expect chasers. And that's fine because there's a lot of Tam. out there. But it'll take people some time. And so we have a very nice lead. And it definitely solidified kind of the trust that Lloyds puts in us, right? Because if you think about raising money, and we were talking about that earlier, it's like an investor in choosing to invest in us, like an equity investor, the worst that can happen is they go to zero. Nobody wants that,

but that's the worst that can happen. Like, hey, we invest a million dollars in you. potentially if something goes terribly wrong, we could lose the full million. And that's kind of the risk calculation they're taking. With Lloyds, they're saying, look, we're investing this collateral in you. So maybe we're investing a million dollars in collateral. But if something goes wrong, we're going to have to pay out $100 million. Right. So the amount of due diligence that we went through with them was so much more than taking investment, like so much more. It was so much more involved. And it took, you know, over a year. So, yeah, it was, it was an amazing feeling. When you kind of first told me about this product, and obviously this has always been pitched at

retail so far, but in the, like since then, it seems like things have changed. Like, so we now know that banks in the U.S. are looking to custody Bitcoin, like BMI Mellonid, looking at. very serious at this. I don't think they do it yet, but I'm sure it's months or days away or whatever. Is it Anquatch the kind of thing that could end up ensuring the banks that are offering custody? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So our goal is just to insure all the Bitcoin. That's as a company goal, that's what we want to do. So we launched this product with Trident and our first product is insured custody in Trident, retail or commercial. But absolutely, we could, we could insure banks, or any other kind of custodial institution,

we can underwrite their own tech, right? So maybe a company has a reason that they're not using minisccript and they want to do something else. We can utilize the reputation that we've built and the trust that we've built with Lloyds as being expert in Bitcoin custody tech to go in and actually audit somebody else's stack and provide insurance there.

We can license Trident to those companies. So maybe a bank wants to offer custody or another company. So any sort of institution wants to offer custody to their client base, insured custody better yet, they can license Trident from us and we'll embed the insurance in that. So our goal is not to force every customer into our platform and just into our first vault. So our goal is really just to ensure all the Bitcoin, wherever it is, and continue expanding to be able to do that over time. 100 million is obviously max coverage right now. If you were to get a bank, that's obviously not going to cut it. It's great for an individual, but it's not going to do it for a bank.

So is that just something you'll have to work with Lloyds of London as and when that arises? Yeah, and actually we can do that now. So what we have is, so we have this coverholder status. So Anchor Watch is a Lloyds of London cover holder. And that means we're writing our policies on Lloyds of London paper. So our policies are Lloyds of London policies. And it means we've been conferred this status and the ability to call ourselves a cover holder. And then under that is what's called a binding authority. And so the $100 million limit is to this specific product. So using Trident, this vault, $100 million, U.S. based, that's the binding authority. And that's what we can. pretty much have pre-approval to be writing those policies all day long. If a customer comes to us, even now, and says any number of things, they might say, hey, we like Trident, we want to use that, but actually over the next three years, we'd like a billion

dollar policy, we would just need to go to Lloyd's, more or less pitch it to them. Because remember, they're investment bankers, right? So we're really bringing the opportunity to them and saying, hey, we've got this customer. We've done our underwriting. We think they're insurable. Here's why we think it's a safe risk. And here's maybe the additional security things that we're going to do to ensure that it, in fact, is safe enough to hold a billion dollars. And we would really make the case to Lloyds on why we think they should consider.

a much larger policy. And either our existing syndicates, who are already underwriting us, they could say, okay, you know, we've been convinced here's, you know, an exception and you can write a billion dollar policy for this customer, or we could expand the search. So the way that Lloyd's works is Lloyd's is really a marketplace of all these insurance companies that choose to participate in under this Lloyd's umbrella. And so right now, our program is backed by three different Lloyds syndicates. And if they said, like, no, you know, actually, like, we really, we're comfortable going up to 100 million, then we could say, well, this customer is really serious. They really do want a billion dollar policy. And that's a big enough policy that it's worth our time. So we will actually

take on the additional work. And we will go out to the additional different insurers. who also participate in Lloyds, and we will try to convince them to come in. So maybe we have our first three who provide 100 million of coverage, and then maybe we find, you know, six more who are also willing to throw in 100 or 150, and then we can assemble a billion dollar policy and then go back to the customer. So we can do that, you know, really now. So we would only, just because of the workload involved, we would only be willing to go after a custom policy like that for pretty significant holdings.

But another example of doing it would be somebody, and we're in the process of this with a couple of, you know, companies who have expressed interest, who are saying, hey, we actually don't want to use Trident. We want to, we want to ensure Bitcoin and a different stack and for a different use case. And here's kind of what we're trying to do. And can you write a policy for that? And it's not under that initial binding authority. Because as I said, the binding authority is for this very specific product. But we are kind of the first line of underwriting.

Like we would first decide, like, do we think it's a safe risk? So, you know, and we definitely get very interesting proposals from companies that are doing kind of L2 and various, you know, DAOs and all sorts of protocol-based schemes that want insurance. And, you know, a lot of them we just pass. Like, it's not something that we think is worth going after. We're very focused. But if we find one that we're like, actually, in terms of safe, we're actually very confident in the tech and the players and the policy that they're seeking

is big enough that I think it would be worth it from an ROI standpoint. So yeah, we're willing to take that on. And so very similarly, we would then be writing a business plan. So we would then be effectively a broker, right? And so we would then advocate on behalf of that company and what they're trying to do. and we would write a business plan saying, here's what they're trying to do, here's the size of the risk,

here's why we, the underwriters, feel that this is a safe risk, here's an overview of the tech, and we thank Lloyd's that, you know, this is a good risk and you guys should commit capital to it. And we're going to go broker that to the Lloyd's markets and find the insurers who are willing to do that, and we'll bring it back and then insure those other companies.

So that's something that we're, you know, that we can do today. We're fully licensed to do that. And so as long as the policy is big enough, I'm very open to kind of taking those inquiries and exploring that with different companies. Very cool. I'm very impressed with what you and Rob have done.

I honestly think it's probably one of the coolest products in Bitcoin right now. Is there anything that we didn't get into that you wish we had? No, I think we're super lucky as a startup to have the amount of name recognition, and interest from the community at this stage in the game, to be launched only a month and to have, you know, the amount of familiarity with the product is super, I think, I mean, I would say lucky, but also a product of building for three years, and both Rob and myself have been very vocal on what we're working on.

And so, no, I mean, I think at the end of the day, the questions that people have for me, we've mostly covered. People are interested to understand the tech, how the vault works, how the key management works. Pricing, which I guess we didn't talk about too much and coverage. And from there, they pretty much are good to go at that point. So, I mean, pricing, I think, is something we're also really proud of. In the same way earlier, we were talking about convincing Lloyds and using Mnisccript, that shows up in the customer-facing pricing, so very much. So our customer pricing starts at 55 basis points. That's the minimum that we're allowed to charge. So that's of the value. And it goes up to about two points.

So that's the price range. But the vast, vast majority of customers who are going through the quote process are being quoted pretty much from 55 basis points up to maybe 65 or 70. So they're ending up really well, well priced. And just as a point of reference, when you look at other asset classes and the cost of insurance, so if you invest in physical gold, gold custody insurance is like 1 to 2% of the asset value, fine arts insurance, 2 to 7%, so very expensive. especially if it's high-profile art or high-profile owners will push up the rates quite a bit. Jewelry in the same range, one or two and significantly up from there.

If you look more traditional, like homeowners policies in a percentage term, range anywhere from like 40 basis points, 0.4% up to several points. car insurance. People did not look at their car insurance as a percentage. There's a reason why they don't advertise it that way because the cost of car insurance compared to the Blue Book value is anywhere from 5 to 25% of the asset value. So all of that to say is at 55 basis points,

we are already getting a lot of recognition from Lloyd's in terms of how very safe Trident Vault is. So we are, we've built something that we think is extraordinarily robust and protective of customers' assets. And they ultimately have priced the insurance accordingly. So that's something that we're very proud of. And it took, you know, a lot of advocating on behalf of Bitcoiners to Lloyds, both in terms of, look, we want to bring a fair a fair price, right? Like we've built this. We're advocating for how safe it is, and therefore, the insurance should be affordable. And also just reminding Lloyds as well that Bitcoiners are very cheap. And they don't actually like to spend money. And if we wanted to distribute this

product and do well with it, that we really needed to be aggressive on pricing from the get-go. And so when you compare it to the price of uninsured custody, like what sole custodian, charge, it might be a little less, but it's for uninsured custody. And I've always said, if you're paying for uninsured custody and it's AUNB-based, what are you actually, what are you actually paying for? You're paying for them to hold a tiny piece of data, just a tiny piece of data that you could store in Google Drive for $3 a month, right? And, but what they're doing is they're charging you an AUM because it's an important piece of data. And so they're saying, hey, you value this and therefore we're going to charge you a custody fee that's based on the

value of the data instead of the size of the data, which is unique. And by the way, if something goes wrong, game over. Like, you know, we probably won't even apologize because our lawyers will tell us not to, right? There's just, so if you're not paying. for a guarantee with custody, what are you actually paying for at all? And so I think over time, there's, we call it fiduciary flight that as Anchor Watch and maybe competitors, as affordable, high-quality insurance becomes more and more readily available on the marketplace. If you're a fiduciary, how do you choose uninsured custody? You know, maybe you save a few bips a year, with no backup, with no guarantee.

I just, I don't think uninsured custody is long for this world. I think that transition will happen very quickly over the next, the next few years. And, you know, we're well positioned to do very well as a result. But I just think in terms of just logic, what you're paying for should be an absolute guarantee that we will not mess up. And if we do mess up, whether it's our fault or somebody else's, you will be made whole or you will, you know, be taken care of. And the reality is a lot of custodians don't have a balance sheet other than their crypto, right? A couple of do, like Fidelity, right? They've got an enormous balance sheet that has nothing to do with Bitcoin. But most of the crypto custodians, their balance sheet is crypto. And so, And so if they have some sort of catastrophic loss wipe out, there is not another pool of capital for them to make customers whole, even if they're absolutely good actors and they're willing to do so.

So, yeah, I mean, I really do think insured custody, back to the original premise of the company at the very, very beginning, even when it looked different. The idea is like, no, no, like insured custody, it absolutely has to happen. Like in order for this asset to mature and be accepted by a broader swath of society and institutional money, it is, in our opinion, a foregone conclusion. And it will become the norm. Yeah, I think it's very, very cool. Thank you very much for that, Becca. And just huge congratulations to what you and Rob have done it. It was very impressive.

Is there any way you want to send anyone before we close out? anytime they can come visit us at anchorwatch.com. So you can find information there. You can sign up for more information and be part of our mailing list there. You can also follow us on Twitter. So we've got the Anchor Watch handle. And so you can always, we're pretty active there. You can reach out to me directly, Becca at anchorwatch.com and Rob.

Rob at anchorwatch.com anytime. And last but not least, if you're looking to get a quote, the fastest way is to email us at agent at anchorwatch.com. And that's manned by the whole team. And we'll get on a call, go through the specifics, you know, your choices in terms of how you want to configure your vault in your particular situation. And in one call, we can get you a very accurate rate quotes

and have you off to the races. Amazing. Thank you for the time, Becca. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.