Founders: Rob Hamilton
Founded date: March 2022
Location of the headquarters: Nashville, Tn
Number of employees: Five (there will be seven)
Website: https://www.anchorwatch.com/
Public or private? Private
After almost three years of development, Anchorwatch has launched its product, a collaborative vault of Bitcoin Multisig that comes with an insurance policy.
The company has created what calls a Trident vault, which uses intelligent contracts in Bitcoin to enable features such as Timelocks, Multisig Quorums and expense conditions, and Anchorwatch ensures the bitcoin protected by these vaults as a Lloyd’s tendetal in London.
The combination of this technology plus the world insurance level helps protect anchorwatch customers from the 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 the Bitcoin space was totally missing,” said Co -founder and Operation Director of Anchorwatch, Becca Rubenfeld, to Bitcoin magazine. “There are some risks that technology cannot mitigate, such as really sophisticated key attacks, a client who dies with their keys or even Anchorwatch is a bad actor, and we could connect those holes with insurance.”
The market has been prepared for a product like this, since Rubenfeld and his team have been presenting a lot of consultations and requests of their product since the company opened its doors for business last month.
And it is ironic that Rubenfeld has found his niche in the Bitcoin industry to help people and institutions secure and ensure their Bitcoin batteries, especially considering that it was the fact that he did not see Bitcoin both more than a speculative tool who took him to his meeting his co -founder in Anchorwatch, Rob Hamilton.
The Origins of Anchorwatch
Rubenfeld and Hamilton interacted for the first time in group chat rooms at the Social Network Applications Club at the end of 2020.
“We met in the Bitcoin rooms of the Club House,” Rubenfeld said.
“I was just trying to get a commercial alpha, and there were these guys in the rooms that were like who is who from Bitcoin. They directed Bitcoin companies, and were central developers and cultural personalities. We were all hanging out during quarantine, ”he added.
“Everyone was hungry for human connection, and we became friends. I put on this way very fast. “
During this time, which Rubenfeld refers with love as his “master class in Bitcoin,” Hamilton listened for the first time to discuss the need for Bitcoin insurance.
“Rob was only devising and realized that he knew how he would build technology to do that self -opposite,” Rubenfeld said.
The tastes of American Hodl and Jason Williams urged Hamilton to build the product and were two of its first investors. Rubenfeld joined the lid table shortly after, but quickly noticed that he had the ability to help Hamilton in other ways.
“I was very busy building its MVP (minimum viable product), and I was like ‘ok Do you know a lot about insurance?
In a short time, Rubenfeld began to complete these tasks and many others for Hamilton while focused on coding. In doing so, he took advantage of the skills he had obtained during his years working in corporations for companies such as Starbucks, Target and American Eagle.
At first, he got voluntary, but after taking two every night during his first week helping Hamilton, he realized that he had found a vocation.
“We were working close together, talking about the vision all day,” Rubenfeld recalled.
“It was very intense and very funny, and it was a change that I was looking for compared to the work I had been doing. Then, after a little more than a week, I told him that if we wanted to do this together, I would leave Starbucks and join full time. I was inside, and so I joined as co -founder and operations director a few days later, ”he added.
From that moment on, Rubenfeld and Hamilton worked relentlessly, for almost three years.
“We were in this office down again 12 hours a day,” Rubenfeld said. “Fortunately, our investors remained patients when we passed from zero to one.”
The Anchorwatch product
As mentioned, the Anchorwatch product allows its customers to administer its bitcoin through a unique multisig configuration for which Anchorwatch itself has some of the keys, while assuring Bitcoin with the back of Lloyd’s in London, a of the largest and most reactable insurance companies. In the world.
Rubenfeld broke the product in greater detail:
“At the highest level, we are distributing Bitcoin custody among multiple keys over time,” he explained.
“With Timelocks, it allows you to have a standard way to manage your bitcoin where the client contains the keys and Anchorwatch has keys, but we are both required significants, which makes it a unique form of collaborative custody,” he added. “But then, over time, additional ways of spending Bitcoin are available, which allows disaster management and guarantees of inheritance procedures.”
In other words, this Timelock technology, which uses the Bitcoin miniscript, allows customers to access their bitcoin using different key combinations over time, which is useful if the keys are lost, steal or destroyed or not They are available due to the death or changes of employees in the company.
And Anchorwatch is only required to sign the transaction as long as the client continues its insurance policy with the company. If the client chooses to cancel the policy, Anchorwatch can return the bitcoin to the originally agreed Bitcoin address.
Anchorwatch itself can never unilaterally control the bitcoin of a client, and if Anchorwatch disappeared, the vault can be controlled only with the client’s keys once the policy ends. The flexibility to protect customers against many dangers at the same time is the advantage of building with miniscript and integrating it with insurance.
Insurance policies, which begin at 0.55% of the customer bitcoin value of the customer, cover amounts of bitcoin ranging from $ 250,000 to $ 100 million.
“The only thing about the product is that, although it has an insurance policy and we, through Lloyd in London, have financial responsibility, we have a key and we are a required signatory,” Rubenfeld explained.
“Then, or we can sign in combination with the client or, in the case of the death of a client or a sophisticated key attack, then we could eventually sign in combination with a recovery institution,” he added.
“But when your insurance policy ends if you do not choose to renew with us, the vault can be controlled only by the client’s keys, as scheduled in the Bitcoin Timelocks, all this is programmed at the protocol level, so it is verifiable In the chain “
Initial customers
After its launch at the end of December, the gates were opened and the potential clients began to contact.
“The early answer has been very, very strong,” Rubenfeld said. “Something like 180 people have communicated to ask.”
Rubenfeld also pointed out that the initial interest comes from a combination of retail and commercial customers based in the United States, although he is stronger towards retail customers. Some ensure all their Bitcoin holdings, while others are segmenting their bitcoin among multiple custody methods and are ensuring a portion.
“The typical retail client is ensuring 5-15 bitcoin,” Rubenfeld shared. “80% of those who have registered for the service are protecting between $ 300,000 and $ 3 million in Bitcoin, and we are in the process of working through the subscription in several large customers with much larger policies.”
Rubenfeld assured me that Anchorwatch is prepared to handle larger accounts, and that she is excited to bring Anchorwatch to the market at a time when Bitcoin’s corporate strategies become more popular.
She hopes to receive calls from customers such as Anchorwatch is established.
“They will look from afar a little alone to confirm that they feel comfortable about how things are going before they move,” Rubenfeld said.
“But we have had some large commercial clients who approach and, in some cases, have thousands of Bitcoin, and could start with a $ 10 million policy. Then, they only ensure a bit, since they make sure they are happy as they are customers.
“They have declared that if they are happy next year, they would move more to Trident to cover himself.”
Final protection
Rubenfeld believes that both retail and corporate clients of Anchorwatch will find that Anchorwatch services are invaluable, since not only protects the bitcoin from customers, but also potentially even the clients themselves.
“We are an insurance company, but we are really protecting people,” Rubenfeld explained.
“Because of the nature of technology and insurance, which protects against key attacks, we actually keep safe people. Being an anchor client discourages key attacks, because, one, it is incredibly difficult The property of the insurer, “he added.
“We have the resources of Lloyd’s in London behind us and we are an insurance company: we will be here for a hundred years, so we are going to hunt him forever.”
Rubenfeld continued explaining how the attackers would not have to successfully get the robbery, but they never make a mistake when administering the stolen bitcoin until the day they die (which is difficult to take into account that Bitcoin is a major book).
Rubenfeld believes that this will lead to a trend in which customers deliberately reveal that they are a widewatch client (something that Anchorwatch would never do in their name without their permission) as a means to deter the attackers of even trying to steal them.
“I think what will happen is that people will mean: ‘Hey, I am a widewatch client, not even try,” Rubenfeld said with pride.
“And so we take our work very seriously, we feel that we are protecting people, which is our mission.”
