Meanwhile, a Bermuda-based life insurer that writes policies in bitcoin, raised $37.5 million from existing investors led by Bain Capital Crypto. The round brings total funding above $180 million and funds an expansion of the company’s broker network in Asia and the Gulf.
Haun Ventures, Framework Ventures, Pantera Capital, Apollo, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures and Morgan Creek Digital also took part, the company said. The raise follows an $82 million round in October 2025 that Bain Capital Crypto and Haun Ventures co-led. Sam Altman is among the company’s earlier backers, alongside a $40 million Series A closed in April 2025, The Block reported.
The company entered 2026 with 1,183 bitcoin on its balance sheet, up more than fivefold from a year earlier, according to audited figures published in April. It also reported 759 bitcoin in statutory capital and surplus. Management says net long-term underwriting income has already passed last year’s total and is on track to more than double in 2026, though it has not given an absolute figure.
“Meanwhile owns every layer of a regulated life insurer and builds it like an AI-enabled startup. The growth this year proves the model.”
That comment came from Stefan Cohen, a partner at Bain Capital Crypto, in the funding announcement.
A narrow product, aimed at wealthy families
Meanwhile launched BTC Life 1-Pay in early 2026 for high-net-worth clients outside the United States. The policy takes a single premium paid in bitcoin and pays a guaranteed death benefit in the same asset. After the first year, policyholders can borrow up to 90 percent of the policy’s value with no repayment schedule and no margin calls, a structure that avoids the forced liquidations that hit overcollateralized bitcoin loans during price drops. A separate product, BTC 10-Pay, was built for US taxpayers.
The company said it has signed 15 brokers serving wealthy families since the launch, with coverage in Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and Switzerland. Partners include Lioner, an insurance and wealth management group with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Zurich, and Apeiron Group, which runs a marketplace for high-net-worth life insurance.
“Wealthy families around the world already hold bitcoin. What they haven’t had is a regulated way to pass it on. Brokers came to us because their clients kept asking.”
Co-founder and chief executive Zac Townsend made that argument in the announcement, framing the gap as a wealth-transfer problem rather than a trading one.
| Round | Size | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Series A | $40 million | April 2025 |
| Prior round | $82 million | October 2025 |
| Latest round | $37.5 million | October 2026 |
Why insurers are edging into bitcoin
Insurance companies live on long-duration liabilities, which makes them natural candidates for assets that can hold value over decades. Writing the policy in bitcoin removes one failure point that dollar-denominated products carry: the insurer does not have to convert bitcoin to dollars to pay the claim, so there is no currency mismatch between what the family holds and what the policy pays out. The tradeoff is that reserves and premiums move with bitcoin’s price, which makes the solvency math more demanding and the regulator’s job harder. Bermuda’s insurance framework, which already hosts large captives and digital asset firms, gives the company a jurisdiction that has accepted that tradeoff.
Life insurance also sidesteps some of the tax friction that makes spending bitcoin awkward in many countries. In several jurisdictions, transferring a policy to heirs or borrowing against cash value is treated more gently than selling the asset itself. For a family that wants to keep bitcoin across generations, a policy can act as the wrapper that protects the asset through the handover.
The customer profile matters as much as the mechanics. Advisors to large families report that older holders often own their bitcoin in ways that are technically transferable but practically messy: exchange accounts tied to one phone number, hardware wallets whose seeds nobody else has seen, or shares in vehicles that cannot pass to heirs without probate. A policy denominated in the asset the family already holds solves the handover without asking the holder to give up ownership during their lifetime.
Whether demand holds up through a drawdown is the open question. The company’s growth so far has tracked a period when bitcoin recovered from the October 2025 crash and reached new highs. A sustained bear market would test both policyholders’ willingness to keep paying premiums in a falling asset and the insurer’s ability to keep guarantees attractive when yields elsewhere are rising. The 90 percent borrowing feature, generous by traditional standards, would come under pressure if collateral values fell sharply.
The raise also reflects where crypto venture money is going. JPMorgan analysts estimated this week that around $50 billion has flowed into digital assets this year, with venture funding increasingly concentrated in fewer, larger rounds led by established firms. An insurer with audited reserves and a regulated balance sheet fits that pattern more closely than most 2021-era crypto startups did.
Competition is arriving. US regulators granted preliminary charter approvals to several crypto-native financial firms over the past year, and custody banks are marketing bitcoin custody to estate planners. What none of them has yet offered at scale is the actuarial layer: a reserves and death-benefit structure with a regulated insurer behind it. That is the part Meanwhile is betting on, and the part that is hardest to copy quickly.