The Bitcoin Verdict: A Conversation With Evertas Founder J. Gdanski About Cryptocurrency And Web 3 Insurance (Video) – Insurance Laws and Products

In this episode of “The Bitcoin Verdict,” host and
partner Hailey Lennon is joined by J. Gdanski, CEO and
founder of cryptocurrency insurance company Evertas, to discuss how
his company navigates an industry that doesn’t fit into
traditional insurance coverage and policies. Evertas is a client of
Brown Rudnick.

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One of the bigger challenges in providing insurance in the
crypto space is complexities in calculating and covering risk,
according to Gdanski.

“What is unique about what we’re doing, which is
different than what was done with cyber, is we actually have deep
technical experts from the field and the industry that we’re
trying to insure, and we started with the kind of bottom-up risk
management and risk assessment framework, and from there, it came
to pricing its products,” Gdanski said. “What was done
with cyber was just this sort of top-down thing; it was designed by
insurance people who were not experts in anything except for
insurance.”

Founded in 2017, Evertas is a crypto insurance company that
develops regulated insurance and risk mitigation solutions for
crypto assets. The Chicago-based company focuses on covering
institutional holders of crypto assets including exchanges,
custodians, traditional financial institutions, funds, family
offices, and high-net-worth individuals.

Before starting Evertas, Gdanski was a leader in the enterprise
blockchain space and was one of the first to work on institutional
custody for crypto. He also served as an early contributor to
blockchain consortia, including Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, of
which he was a founding member.

As the need for crypto insurance develops, government agencies
and regulators are starting to have an interest in people having
coverage to protect themselves, Gdanski said.

“It used to be ‘have insurance, just show them a piece
of paper that says insurance with your company’s name on it or
not,'” he said. “That’s changed, shockingly.
Sooner than I thought, actually. So people with money transmitter
licenses, they would have these Fidelity insurance policies, they
were relatively inexpensive, and I thought it would be sometime
this year or next, but they started last year.”

He said companies that are dealing in cryptocurrency and fiat
started getting questions last year from regulators and the
government about why their policies only covered the fiat
transfers, not crypto.

And now, those companies are being required to have crypto
insurance, as well, which led to a number of panicked phone calls
from people who couldn’t operate their business until they got
a new insurance policy, Gdanski said.

“I think certainly, when you look at Hong Kong, for years
Hong Kong authorities had very stringent insurance
requirements,” he said. “There are likely to be some
coming out of the EU, they’re already in the UAE. And it’s
not just that you have a piece of paper that has your name on it
that says insurance, but that the insurance is actually covering
the right risk.”

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