Founders: Becca Rubenfeld and Rob Hamilton
Date founded: March 2022
Position of the headquarters: Nashville, TN
Number of employees: Five (soon to be seven)
Website: https://www.anchorwatch.com/
Public or private? Private
After almost three years of development, Anchorwatch launched its product: once collaborative Bitcoin Multisig which is supplied with an insurance policy.
The company has created what Trident Vault calls, which uses intelligent Bitcoin contracts to allow features such as timel
The combination of this technology plus worldwide insurance level helps to protect customers anchorwatch from risks related to theft, kidnappings, fraud or catastrophic events. It is a level of protection that no Bitcoin company has offered to date.
“We identified that the insurance in Bitcoin space was totally lacking,” said the anchorwatch co-founder and Coo Becca Rubenfeld Bitcoin Magazine. “There are some risks that technology cannot mitigate – like really sophisticated keys attacks, a customer who dies with their keys or even anchorwatch is a bad actor – and we have been able to connect those holes to the insurance.”
The market was prepared for a product like this, since Rubenfeld and its team have put in place a series of requests and requests for its product since the company opened its doors for businesses last month.
And it is ironic that Rubenfeld has found its niche in the bitcoin sector in helping people and institutions to guarantee and ensure their Bitcoin batteries, especially considering that it has not seen Bitcoin much more than a speculative tool that led to his I meet his co-founder at Anchorwatch, Rob Hamilton.
The origins of Anchorwatch
Rubenfeld and Hamilton interacted for the first time in the group chat room on the Club House for Social Media App at the end of 2020.
“We met in Bitcoin rooms in Club House,” said Rubenfeld.
“I was just trying to trade Alpha, and there were these guys in the rooms that were like Bitcoin’s Who’s Who Who Who. They managed Bitcoin companies and were basic developers and cultural personalities. We were all around during quarantine, “he added.
“Everyone was hungry for human connection and we became friends. I got orange in this way very quickly. “
During this period, which Rubenfeld refers with affection as its “Masterclass in Bitcoin”, Hamilton heard for the first time to discuss the need for Bitcoin insurance.
“Rob was just identifying and realized he knew how he would build the technology to make that self -comporm insurance,” said Rubenfeld.
Artists of the caliber of American Hodl and Jason Williams urged Hamilton to build the product and were two of his first investors. Rubenfeld joined the hooding table shortly after, but quickly noticed that he had the ability to help Hamilton in other ways.
“He was very busy building his MVP (minimum practicable product), and I was like ‘ok, Rob, therefore, just make sure to make a bunch of pitch and you need a professional form and you have to make some forecasts, and, by the way , do you know a lot about insurance? “” Rubenfeld explained.
In a short time Rubenfeld began to complete these tasks and many others for Hamilton while focusing on the coding. In this way, he exploited the skills he had acquired during his years working in companies for companies such as Starbucks, Target and American Eagle.
At the beginning, she arrived as a volunteer, but after pulling two nights during his first week helping Hamilton, he realized he had found a call.
“We were working closely together, speaking all day of vision,” Rubenfeld recalled.
“It was so intense and so funny, and it was only a change that I was looking for compared to the work I was doing. So, after just over a week, I told him, if we wanted to do it together, I would have left Starbucks and I would have joined full time. He was inside, and so I joined as a co-founder and coo a few days later, “he added.
From that moment, Rubenfeld and Hamilton have worked incessantly for almost three years.
“We were in this office at the head of 12 more hours a day every day,” said Rubenfeld. “Fortunately, our investors remained patient as we passed from scratch to one.”
The product Anchorwatch
As mentioned, the anchorwatch product allows its customers to manage and protect their bitcoin through a unique Multisig configuration for which they also holds some of the keys, while ensuring Bitcoin with the support of Lloyd’s in London, one of the largest and most respectable insurance companies. in the world.
Rubenfeld has reduced the product in more detail:
“At the highest level, we are distributing the custody of Bitcoin among several keys over time,” he explained.
“With the timel” but over time further ways to spend the bitcoin become available, which allows the management of catastrophes and the inheritance procedure. “
In other words, this Timellock technology, which uses Bitcoin’s miniscript, allows customers to access their Bitcoin using different combinations of keys over time, which is useful if the keys are lost, stolen or destroyed or not available due to the death or changes of employees at the company.
And Anchorwatch is required only to sign the transaction as long as the customer continues his insurance policy with the company. If the customer chooses to cancel politics, Anchorwatch can return the Bitcoin to the Bitcoin address originally agreed.
Anchorwatch itself can never unilaterally control the bitcoin of a customer and if anchorwatch had to disappear, the vault can possibly be controlled only by the customer’s keys only once the policy is finished. Flexibility to protect customers from many dangers simultaneously is the advantage of building with miniscript and incorporating insurance.
The insurance policies, which start at 0.55% of the value of a customer’s Bitcoin invitations every year, cover Bitcoin amounts ranging from $ 250,000 to $ 100 million.
“The unique thing of the product is that while you have an insurance policy and we, through Lloyd’s in London, we have a financial responsibility, we have a key and we are a requested signatory,” explained Rubenfeld.
“So, either we can sign in combination with the customer or, in the case of a death of the customer or a sophisticated attack of keys, so we could possibly sign in combination with a recovery institute,” he added.
“But when the insurance policy ends if you do not choose to renew ourselves with us, the Caveau can only be controlled by the customer’s keys, as scheduled in Bitcoin times – all this is scheduled at the protocol level, therefore it is verifiable on the chain. “
Initial customers
After the launch at the end of December, the doors opened and potential customers began to contact themselves.
“The initial answer was very, very strong,” said Rubenfeld. “Something like 180 people contacted to investigate.”
Rubenfeld has also observed that the initial interest comes from a mix of commercial and commercial customers based in the United States, although it inclrates heavier towards retail customers. Some are ensuring their entire participations of Bitcoin, while others segmented their bitcoin among multiple custody methods and are ensuring a part.
“The typical retail customer is to guarantee 5-15 bitcoins,” Rubenfeld shared. “80% of those who have enrolled in the service are protecting between $ 300,000 and $ 3 million bitcoins and are working through signing on several large customers with much larger policies.”
Rubenfeld has assured me that Anchorwatch is ready to manage larger accounts and that it is enthusiastic to bring the anchorwatch product to the market at a time when corporate bitcoin strategies are becoming more popular.
He expects to receive calls from customers as anchorwatch is established.
“They will look from afar for a while just to confirm that they are at ease how things are going before they move,” said Rubenfeld.
“But we made some great commercial customers reach and, in some cases, have thousands of bitcoins and could start with a policy of $ 10 million. So, they are only ensuring a little, since they ensure that they are happy as customers. We like this process and we feel sure while we serve them, “he added.
“They said that if they are happy next year, Bitcoin would move to Trident to be covered.”
Maximum protection
Rubenfeld believes that both the retail customers of anchorwatch and company will find the non -affectable anchorwatch services as not only protects the bitcoin of customers, but potentially also the customers themselves.
“We are an insurance company, but in reality we are protecting people,” explained Rubenfeld.
“By nature both of the technology and the insurance, which protects from the attacks of keys, are actually keeping people safe. Being a client of Anchorwatch disincentives, because, one, it is incredibly difficult to extract a key attack with the way the vault is built and, two, even if the attacker pulls out an attack the stolen bitcoin becomes the property of the insurer, “he added.
“We have the resources of Lloyd’s in London behind them and we are an insurance company: we will be here per hundred years, so it will give you forever.”
Rubenfeld continued to explain how the attackers should not have successfully made the robbery successfully, but never make an error in the management of Bitcoin stolen until the day they die (which is difficult considering that Bitcoin is a public master book).
Rubenfeld believes that this will lead to a trend in which customers will intentionally reveal that they are a customer of anchorwatch (something that would never do by them without their permission) as a means of dissuading the attackers from the attempt to steal them.
“I think what will happen whether people will want to say:” Hey, they are a client Anchorwatch – Don’t try it even, “said Rubenfeld with pride.
“And so we take our job very seriously: we feel like themselves by protecting people, who is our mission.”