(Bloomberg) --Apollo, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Pantera Capital and Stillmark are joining Bain Capital and crypto investor Haun Ventures to back the Bitcoin life insurance firm Meanwhile in a $82 million funding round.
The Bermuda-regulated insurer, which claims to be the first life insurer to offer products entirely denominated in crypto, began to provide policies in 2023. The firm invests policyholders' premiums by lending Bitcoin to large, regulated financial institutions. Zac Townsend, a co-founder and chief executive officer of Meanwhile, said the firm is now "one of the largest lenders of Bitcoin in the world at duration," or over longer periods of time.
"We are not running a hedge fund or trading desk or worried about the price of Bitcoin day-to day or week-to-week or month-to-month," Townsend said in an interview. "We engage on this side of the business in institutional B2B, private credit."
Meanwhile's life insurance products also provide tax advantages for Bitcoin holders. After two years, policyholders can borrow up to 90% of their policy's Bitcoin value in a tax-free manner, according to the firm's website. The borrowed Bitcoin will adopt a new cost basis, allowing the policyholders to sell the Bitcoin without triggering capital gains taxes.
Life insurance "is a really important underpinning of financial services and products in the space," Katie Haun, founder and CEO of Haun Ventures, said during an interview Tuesday on Bloomberg Television. "Also there's tax advantage to life insurance products and it's a three-trillion-dollar market opportunity. I think the fact now that you're seeing Bitcoin life insurance being offered is just a reflection of how far Bitcoin has come."
The fundraise came just six months after the firm announced its series A funding round of $40 million in April. Meanwhile's initial funding in 2023 was led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Townsend declined to comment on the company's latest valuation.
Townsend said that the firm will use the money to grow the team's capacity to serve the growing institutional demand for Bitcoin insurance products.
"This is just like such an institutional year for Bitcoin," Townsend said. "It's really transforming the Bitcoin ecosystem. Our particular breed of well-regulated, upstanding audited [products] really resonates with life insurers, retirement companies and institutions. And so we are working with them to bring Bitcoin-linked or Bitcoin-denominated products to market."
Stefan Cohen, managing director of Bain Capital's crypto team, said that Bitcoin's evolution as an alternative asset shows that there could be more demand for Bitcoin-focused insurance products.
"As the collateral and alternative asset gets better and better and more widely adopted, individuals will want financial products like life insurance that are not expressed in fiat terms that are expressed in Bitcoin terms," said Cohen.
