Tabit Insurance, a Barbados-based company offering insurance solutions for the digital assets industry, raised $40 million in a facility capitalized in Bitcoin.
The company said in a press release that the capitalization of the $40 million insurance facility in Bitcoin (BTC) was “an industry first”, with company auditors and regulators able to verify the financing in real time.
According to Tabit, Bitcoin offers greater transparency, particularly for the insurance industry, with the digital asset also key to companies’ exploring alternative funding channels.
The company will hold all of the capital raised in BTC. However, insurance policies as well as premiums will remain denominated in U.S. dollars.
William Shihara, co-founder of Tabit, said in a statement that the decision to support a capitalization effort entirely in Bitcoin underscores Tabit’s confidence in the new payment option. It also affirms the company’s support for its partners.
“By combining traditional balance sheet strength with carefully chosen assets like bitcoin, we’re able to stay responsive to market shifts and better serve the insurance community. This solution offers a regulated dollar return which we’re excited to earn on an alternative asset class such as bitcoin,” Shihara added.
Incorporated in Barbados, Tabit is licensed as a class 2 insurer by the Financial Services Commission. The firm, operating as a segregated cell company, does not just offer BTC-backed liability policies – it offers dollar returns to BTC holders.
Bitcoin allows the company a path into an ecosystem largely untapped in the insurance space, Stephen Stonberg said. The Tabit co-founder and chief executive officer is a former Binance and Bittrex exec, who also worked at JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse Asset Management.
“We’re eager to move the insurance sector into the future by demonstrating what is possible by allowing an insurer to access a largely new and untapped source of insurance capital: digital assets,” he noted.
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