A 1986 Tax Loophole Made Bitcoin Life Insurance Possible

Zac Townsend built a life insurance company that operates entirely in Bitcoin. No dollars. You pay premiums in Bitcoin, they pay claims in Bitcoin, and the whole thing is structured to give US policyholders the same tax benefits as traditional life insurance. How? A quirk in the tax code from 1986. The language uses "value" instead of "dollars" when defining the rules. Meanwhile took that opening and ran with it. The company is based in Bermuda, which sounds sketchy until you realize it's where Chubb, Swiss Re, and most major reinsurers park their offshore operations. Coinbase and Circle are there too. Bermuda wants to be just permissive enough to attract business without getting sanctioned. Zac started his career as employee 37 at Stripe, founded a banking infrastructure company that sold to Silicon Valley Bank, and got his first Bitcoin directly from Brian Armstrong in a meeting. He woke up at 2am in Austin with the idea for a crypto life insurance company and wrote the whole business plan that night. Meanwhile has raised from Sam Altman, Northwestern Mutual, Apollo, Fidelity-backed Fulgar Ventures, and Framework. They lend Bitcoin to low-basis holders at 3% annually so those holders can access liquidity without triggering capital gains. The company runs like a 1830s life insurance carrier, just denominated in Bitcoin.