Zac Townsend: Insurance for the Crypto Era - [Making Markets, EP.64]

My guest today is Zac Townsend, co-founder and CEO of Meanwhile. Insurance is a product nearly everyone touches, but few understand, and even fewer try to reinvent. Meanwhile is doing just that, building a fully licensed life insurance carrier that holds its reserves in Bitcoin. In this conversation, we talk about what makes insurance structurally hard to change, how Bitcoin opens up new design space, and why innovation here demands control over product, capital, and regulation all at once. Please enjoy this conversation with Zac Townsend. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page HERE. ----- Making Markets is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Making Markets, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @makingmkts | @ericgoldenx Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes (00:00:00) Welcome to Making Markets (00:01:20) Understanding Term Life Insurance (00:03:22) Exploring Whole Life Insurance (00:05:00) The Principal-Agent Problem in Insurance (00:07:59) Investment Strategies and Tax Implications (00:13:46) Challenges in the Insurance Industry (00:17:59) Founding an Insurance Startup (00:25:22) Bitcoin and Life Insurance (00:42:14) Future of Bitcoin and Insurance (00:44:50) Final Thoughts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices