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Last week, Meanwhile announced a whopping $40 million raise co-led by Framework Ventures and Fulgur Ventures.
However, the raise is a bit more significant than was initially reported.
“This is the largest equity investment that Framework Ventures has ever made,” Framework’s Michael Anderson exclusively told me.
If you’re not familiar, Meanwhile is a bitcoin life insurance company valued at $190 million after their Series A announcement. Oh, and here’s an interesting factoid: They only have 10 employees.
“We’ve written all our own technology,” Zachary Townsend, Meanwhile’s CEO, explained.
I asked Townsend whether or not the firm would consider creating a US-based subsidiary, as its current subsidiary is fully licensed and regulated by Bermuda. Through that license, I should note, Meanwhile’s able to offer its services in a variety of countries including the US, UK and Canada.
Townsend explained that it’s on the cards in the future to build an “onshore life insurance company that interacts with our offshore company to offer Bitcoin products to folks in the US,” but it’s going to take a lot more than a friendly regulatory environment to make that happen.
“Insurance is regulated on a state-by-state basis, and obviously there are states that are more crypto-friendly versus states that are less crypto-friendly. I think doing the particular thing we do, which is having everything in Bitcoin, which we consider […] safer, would be quite difficult in the United States in the near term,” he noted.
Townsend explained Meanwhile has some plans to put the $40 million raised to use.
“Expanding globally is also an expansion of the products we offer and what those customers are interested in,” Townsend explained. “Sometime this year, [we’re] going to launch something that looks like an annuity in Bitcoin. So that would be … you put Bitcoin into an account, there’s a yield or rate of return in many countries that return [of] the account’s tax advantages.”
Meanwhile’s whole life product is a “massive unlock in terms of anyone who [wants] to be able to put Bitcoin into the policy when it’s lower [and] … anybody who does that will be able to borrow Bitcoin out of their life insurance policy over their lifetime,” Anderson said.
Townsend said Meanwhile’s product fit has found success in places like Argentina, Nigeria and Turkey, where folks may not want to take out insurance because of the limitations of the currencies.
“So much of the world has inflation risk, currency risk, regime risk […] and cross-border risk, so no matter where you live, the idea of having life insurance in this global, decentralized store of value is incredibly attractive,” he said.
Has Meanwhile somehow made it — dare I say fun — to look under the hood of an insurance firm? Never knew that was even possible.
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