What's Up with Tech?

Crypto Safety, Finally

• Evan Kirstel

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What if your crypto wallet felt as safe as your bank account? We sit down with Crypto Insurer BDIC Insurance Founder and CEO Jeffrey Glusman to unpack a bold plan to bring deposit insurance to digital assets and unlock mainstream confidence. Instead of chasing whales, the model targets the everyday holder with clear, affordable coverage tiers, vetted wallets, and a focused list of insurable coins. The goal is to turn fear, uncertainty, and doubt into transparent rules and reliable protection that stands up when it counts.

We dig into how coverage works, what’s actually insured, and why solvency signals matter—sovereign fund commitments, bank guarantees, and established carriers. Exchanges are watching closely. With regulators weighing in and users demanding safety, supplemental insurance could become table stakes. Using the Bybit hack as a reality check, Jeffrey explains how an insured framework could have reimbursed most losses, protected AUM, and kept trust intact. Insurance can’t stop every breach, but it can turn catastrophic events into recoverable ones.

Education plays a starring role. We break down hot versus cold wallets, key custody, tokenization, and the small habits that prevent big losses. Jeffrey shares a painful personal phishing story and a recent large-scale fraud involving a spoofed bank and forged policies—then maps out the steps that stop most attacks: a dedicated wallet device with no SIM, no socials, no SMS 2FA; SIM locks at the carrier; $1 test transfers; and on-chain verification. Finally, we talk go-to-market: why Hong Kong and Pan-Asia come first, why Latin America is primed, and how a utility token and partner exchanges could kick off a domino effect toward industry-wide normalization.

If you care about crypto adoption, user protection, and credible risk management, this conversation brings clarity and a practical path forward. Subscribe, share with a friend who trades, and leave a review with your take: should exchanges be required to offer deposit-style insurance?

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey everyone. Fascinating chat today. A new player hit the crypto stage, the Blockchain Deposit Insurance Company, or BDIC, think F D I C for crypto, looking to make your digital wallet as safe and as trusted as a bank account. Imagine that. Jeffrey, how are you?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm doing well, Levin. How are you this morning?

SPEAKER_00:

Doing well. Thanks so much for joining. Really intrigued as a uh crypto owner, uh semi-enthusiast, I guess, enthused for this chat. Sure. Maybe introduce uh yourself and what was the big problem that BDIC was created to solve.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Jeffrey Glossman, the founder and CEO of uh Blockchain Deposit Insurance Corporation. And uh we're Blue Ocean Strategy. The the industry is missing what has been used for normalization in finance for the past hundred some odd years from the late 20s, early 30s and FDIC advent uh to CIPIC uh SIPC coverage right in the in the early 70s. Uh and right now in adoption and normalization, we have seen 500 million last year, 400 million the year before that, and 300 million of crypto that's vanished from people's wallets because lack of security, uh certainly lack of insurance. So the the fear, right, the uncertainty, the doubt, and the safety of our wallets of our cryptocurrencies um should be eliminated. And the average crypto wallet is uh is six thousand dollars. It's not 60 or 600 or 6 million, it's 6,300 USD. Um, so the people that are using it can afford to get coverage for$20 or$30 a month, adopt and use it in their daily life. So it was um a no-brainer for us, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

And FDIC for crypto sounds pretty bold. Uh, love the idea, but how close can we actually get to that level of safety?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, when people think about FDIC, the normal brain power says, oh, so$250,000 worth of coverage, right? The most important thing about FDIC coverage is understanding truly what you're covered for and how much. So for us, you have the option when you come in at$19 a month, you can get coverage from zero to$10,000, right? For$29 a month, you can get coverage from$10,000 to$20,000. We're really not trying to deal with the$100,000,$500 million wallets. We're gonna have some clients that have wallets of that size and we'll create sales to help that coverage. Uh, but what we like to call it in-house is we're really looking to cover the Walmart effect, meaning the general population, the 99% uh that are of this income level, that want to adopt, that want to experience the benefit of using crypto, uh, but have a fear factor because if that 6,000 gets stolen from them, unlike some other people, they can't just reach into their savings account, replenish, and say, oh, that was terrible. I wish it didn't happen. Uh, it'll it'll ruin potentially their month or their quarter or their year.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, really important. And how does your insurance model actually work? What makes it different from traditional coverage of all kinds that are that's out there?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, first of all, it's focused strictly on digital currencies, right? So we've got certain wallets that are approved based on their security and infrastructure metrics, and then we have certain digital currencies that we believe are insurable, right? Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and going down right now. I think we're at nine or ten currencies. So it's not the general world. If you come to us with your wallet, we're gonna do a scan and we're gonna say, hey, you've got one, two, three, four, qualify it. Five, six, seven, not so much. Here's the uh coverage you can get for these three cryptocurrencies in the pricing, and we'll let you uh show us up to five wallets. So you can get aggregate pricing over five wallets, twenty thousand dollars of coverage up to a hundred thousand per person. And um, you know, there are other insurance groups in crypto, but it's only for 25 to 100,000 of Bitcoin or only Bitcoin of 100 to a million, right? And that's really not that's really not the mess. That's dealing with the top 1% of the 1%. Um, and the coverage comes from our balance sheet, our solvency based on commitment from a sovereign fund as well as a bank guarantee. So we can write hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business. Lloyds of London as cover holders, we're hoping to accomplish that in the next three months to be assigned actual cover holder. And in the meanwhile, we can partner with other insurance companies in the space that have been doing crypto business, that are cover holders, whether it's uh Arch Insurance or Tabit Insurance or other companies that have extremely strong reputations and balance sheets, uh, so that when people come in to get coverage, they understand why their money will be safe. Um, and they have premium options just like your car insurance. You can pay monthly, you can pay every six months, pay 12 months, and get appropriate discounting and pricing.

SPEAKER_00:

That's fantastic. You you've you've said for many years that safety is the kind of the missing link for crypto adoption at scale. Um, so is this this the way to build trust? What else do you have in mind? I think that's really lacking at the moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, the you know, the regulators agree. Uh, Senator Kennedy was up on the hill last week talking about how deposit insurance and crypto is what's missing. Um, I think you're going to hear very, very soon uh how exchanges are going to be required to offer supplemental insurance. And we've met with some of the biggest exchanges on the street, uh, and their response to it is not only do they think it's a great idea and that will eliminate this doubt and concern of exchange failure, hacks, whatever it may be, uh, but it will also help them retain clients, attract new clients. And candidly, when you look at the profit margins, and we can use the Bybit attack as a perfect example, uh, they had the profitability on an annual basis to subsidize that cost for all of their users and get a check when something like that happens. So the Black Swan event is tragic as it may seem to be, they can be made whole. Bybit would have uh gotten a check from us for 1.2 billion. There's about 300 million of non-coverable, right? Instead of the 1.5 they lost. If they got that check for 1.2 billion, their clients would have gotten money back. They wouldn't have lost a third of their AUM, a third of their clients, and a year's worth of profits, right? And the industry would have said, wow, we have insurance, we have uh solvency in the event that we are targeted and we get taken down. So I think um I know as a matter of fact that as people look at it, uh, even my 80-some odd-year-old father, who doesn't want to talk about the Bitcoin thing or the wallet thing, understands that if he can get this portable Swiss bank account, right? Barack Obama, great tagline for it, and he can get it insured that he'll buy whatever the amount is that he can buy. But other than that, he doesn't want to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh wow, smart guy. And you're building more than just a you know, insurance product service. It's a real DAP and community-driven ecosystem. What's your big picture, big idea beyond just helping crypto uh holders?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh education, getting people to understand uh terminology. A lot of things get flown by us in human nature. We nod our heads and assume in our ego and our pride uh are too busy saying, I don't understand. Can you explain that to me? So we've got a lot of collaborative partners that are in the education mindset first.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

You get this crypto coverage. Is it enough? No, because we don't cover key loss and key protection. You need to have a separate third party like Station 70, where you can engage them directly. They're gonna protect your keys, and we can cover the rest. And also the understanding of uh hot wallet versus cold wallet, uh terminology that get used every day that people really don't understand. Uh, and we're also making a hard press into education on tokenization and looking at the change in capital markets where how people can bring product to market, how they can issue tokens, how they can stabilize and come to market in a worldwide capacity, right, instead of a focused market. So that's a good uh affiliate, I think, or associate business that we're pushing as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Brilliant. Just speaking of worldwide, uh, Bermuda is your headquarters. Um, beyond being like Paradise, why why was the uh uh why was Bermuda the right launch pad for this venture? And when can I arrange a site business?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no doubt. Well, first of all, Bermuda, we didn't officially open in Bermuda. We went through application there, and and the reason why it's the insurance capital of the world, okay? Everybody knows this. However, we're not writing insurance in Bermuda at this time. We're starting Hong Kong and Panasia. So we withdrew our Bermuda application. We said, we'll get back to you guys in a few months. And in the meanwhile, we opened our Hong Kong office, uh Central District, or with Hang Seng Bank. Panasia is our first core market, and then we're all Latin America and Europe. Uh understanding, we started January 23rd. There's a reason for that date. Um and we thought and we still believe that the US market, 350 million people in total, right, uh, is still 12 to 18 months away from the retail banks and the investment banks forcing the machine, right? The consumers and machine to adopt. So right now our focus is Panasia and Hong Kong. If you look at the exchanges there, OKX, uh, HTX, BTSE, uh, these are exchanges that have 40 and 50 million active crypto users on them, most of which these traders reconcile at the end of the day and pull off exchange into their wallets. Uh, and 99% of them and a beta and and all the questioning say, yes, we would pay$20 or$30 a month to ensure this fractional component. And think about how much money we um use in these subscription services that we don't use, right? I've got at least$112 a month that's going after things that I'm fairly confident I don't use. Um so that market, uh Hong Kong being the crypto hub of the world, uh, and looking at the adoption and where they are, and Latin America is certainly a close second right now. The lack of actual institutional banking in Latin America makes cryptocurrency the perfect solution for population to use there. Uh, and the projections are for Europe to be at 35% adoption in the next five to seven years. Those are pretty big numbers.

SPEAKER_00:

Indeed. So let's talk security. Uh, I've been the target of very sophisticated phishing attempts with deep fakes and voice. You uh as well have been not just personally, but the organization has been targeted uh by fraudsters. Yes. Uh tell us about that, what's going on, and how you've navigated that really difficult situation.

SPEAKER_01:

I'll go first things uh last, the you know, personally being phish attacked and scammed out of over$108,000 myself of an ETH position. That happened from somebody duplicating my device, right? So my ignorance of letting someone else hold my fancy phone, as I call it, uh just to look at it and get an idea and what have you, uh, was my ignorance at that time. And this is two years ago, right? Good luck touching my fancy phone today, good luck even seeing it. Um, the corporate identity theft, the fraud, the forgery, um, the miscommunication has just been an absolute mind blower for us the past, I'd say three weeks. Uh DCB bank, which is a major bank out of India, had corporate identity theft. Another DC bank DCB bank threw up a website. This fraudster DCB threw up BDIC coverage of well, this four or five other false claims of uh regulatory and governmental approvals, right to be safe, and marketed, deposit your digital currencies here. We've got you covered with insurance. Tens of millions of dollars were deposited there. And upon deposited, the front, the fake bank, if you will, the fraudsters would inform you hey, Evan, uh, we got your deposit bad news, your account was hacked. Good news, you've got BDIC insurance though. So if you send this over here to our third-party adjuster, also fraudster, they'll look at the claim and confirm, and then you should be have no problems. And sure enough, every every person to a man sent the claim in, right? Now, the claims came back and said, good news, you've got the coverage, but there's a little spread here, so you've got to send in an additional premium for$16,000. Now, as much as you'd be upset or disappointed about it, you'd ship the$16,000 because you're going to get back your$250. So now people, salt in the womb, not only got hacked on the deposit, but they got scammed on sending the premium. So that for us was um if there's a silver lining there, it is that the proof of concept, people ran to make deposits where there was insurance. The sad part is that they were also insured, uh, or rather issued insurance policy to certificates with a forged signature on it. So I was have been contacted by people saying, Oh, look, look what we got here. You signed this. That's and I'm saying, first of all, that's electronic. Second off, it's not even close. Uh, third off, we don't provide coverage at 250 or 125 on individual wallets. If you look at our website, it flat out says zero to ten, ten to twenty. So I think part of that, and just going back to education and really consumerism. Uh, a lot of people take leaps of faith and don't do the extra step of due diligence. You know, if they would have clicked around a little bit, they would have found our site and said something is rotten in Denmark. Um, so that's the the one thing about education that we say to people is dot i cross t, take your time. You know, if you're adopting, you should be doing one dollar handshakes on every single transaction, not just shipping to an address, right? Learn the system, understand the system. So we've taken those steps. We've uh let many uh authorities know about it, we've put it in the news, we'll continue to. Our biggest ironic glitch with that is Benzinga, the AP, all the biggest publications are making us submit um legal confirmation that we have verified the fraud because the word fraud is a delicate one. So, well, here's all the documentation, guys. What are you waiting for to let people know? And the same even goes with DCB Bank, really. It's been disappointing. I've sent emails to the CEO, I've spoken to their customer service people, uh, and their responses are well, we'll check it out. Uh that shouldn't take much more than five seconds. Candidly, I think it was Barbados and Bermuda almost a month and a half ago put this fake DCB bank on their don't do business uh caution list. So I think that's part of uh even going back to the Bybit hack where I see uh a flaw in the system right now. There is not uh a crypto justice league, if you will. You know, all these big exchanges making billions of dollars of profit, hundreds of millions of dollars in market offerings, how they have it come to candidly to us and develop a community that's based around education and safety and insight and to work together. You know, if if hackers are targeting exchange, if we've got this pool of effort over here to go after them, those are resources, right? And direct resources. So my hopes are that uh gentlemen like Justin Sand of HTX and now Tron, who made claims recently about looking for unity in the community and working together, that his words won't be lost, and that other leaders, Brian Armstrong, Brock Pierce, whoever it may be at these other big companies, will step to the forefront and be more than just look how successful we were with you know 500 million users, uh, rather than here's what we're doing to help those users and have more users join us. That's that's what my call to action is right now.

SPEAKER_00:

And yeah, this is a valuable lesson uh as well. What other uh uh lessons uh can you offer in terms of maybe the top three tips or tricks or best practices as far as security, maybe mobile security or crypto security. I know you have some personal practices like you're throwing me the alley oop on this one.

SPEAKER_01:

So I'll help you out. This this fancy thing right here. You remember that. Everyone remembers that. This feels good, by the way. It's a lot more gratifying than swiping the red button to hang up on somebody. Um, my cryptocurrency is held on fancy phone. There you go, that's all you get to see, uh, which has no SIM card in it, right? And has no social media on it and has no access to it. And call it what you want. It's as close as you can get to a hot wallet being cold, right? Dual authentication going to the same phone where you've got a SIM card uh through SMS is exposure. Uh Nathan uh Beckerman, I think, posted something on this recently on education to let people know this is not the way to do it. Uh the hackers know it's the way you're doing it. If they get access to your SIM card, then that OTP confirmation or that dual authentication could in fact be giving someone the access to your wallet. So I'm a big advocate of having separate devices, uh, first and foremost. Big advocate of not necessarily using uh authentication to the same device, obviously, if you've got two. Um and to be smart enough, and I mentioned it before, not to just engage in transactions because take your time and realize who you're dealing with, learn about etherscan, learn about different ways to call people to the carpet because most fraudsters, most people trying to deceive, if if it's like this, uh a couple of questions of proof, if you will, will usually get them off their game. Um, but I will say, and you mentioned it earlier, I've gotten emails, fake voices, fake names. Uh and these days, you know, if someone's offering me 1500 for 15 billion, it's quite obvious, right? The old uh, you know, someone in the Middle East that needs help for their family. So I guess the biggest word of advice that I would give is if if everyone's driven by fear and greed, is to try to eliminate the greed factor. Um, because that's usually what gets people you know in bigger trouble.

SPEAKER_00:

And you know, my advice, folks, take your, you know, take your phone, uh, your phones to your local store, whether it's Temo or Verizon or ATT, and tell them one, lock the SIM, lock your account. And only transactions allowed are in person in retail, and that'll take care of 99% of the two-factor uh scams. Uh sadly, the other 1% are a little tougher to address.

SPEAKER_01:

But um, I mean, look, you don't you don't need a thousand dollar iPhone for your cryptocurrency wallet, right? You can go spend a hundred bucks, get a fairly good, it's a Samsung, it's gonna hurt some people's brains in the ecosystem of Apple. Uh, but you can spend$100 and get a very, very, very workable Samsung phone, a droid phone, and have your hot wallet on it. They're awfully slim, they fit right in the pocket. So that's the device, isn't what it used to be for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Indeed. So if we talk again in a year or two or five, um uh how will we know BDIC has really changed the game when it comes to crypto and and safety?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you're gonna know that in the next 90 days. You know, our utility token offering will be coming to market, being used for payments, for reconciling right claims, uh, in addition to some other lovely things. People talk about governance, but that's really not what it's about. Um, it's about a true utility token in our ecosystem. We're going to announce a couple of wallet platforms and exchanges that are affiliate partners, they'll be offering to their clients. And we'll be announcing some great news in regards to our solvency, uh, our balance sheet commitment from a sovereign fund that I mentioned, as well as a bank guarantee for a few hundred million dollars so that people understand uh we're here and the offering is real. Um, and when we get into the exchanges that we're partnering with in Panasia, I don't think it'll be a question of legitimacy or adoption. It'll be more so a matter of when are the other exchanges and other wild platforms going to catch up. The two platforms that have signed with us, uh one is going public, I believe, announcing in the next week or so, and the other one is gonna make an announcement probably in a month. Uh, and I've told each of them whoever says it first is only gonna start the domino effect. If I could go back to the 30s and think of if there were 10 banks and one offered FDIC, those other nine we're gonna hustle real quick to catch up because the money's gonna go to the insured, right? Uh, and I think we're gonna see that with the exchanges and platforms that adopt that are gonna cause others to have to. We we spoke to the biggest crypto lender uh in the space, salt lending, since 2016. Um, and they're looking to insure their deposits because now the comp the competition is all offering insurance on deposits. So the normalization of insurance and all these different factors, I think even uh BlackRock said it a couple months ago, they're gonna be in the crypto insurance game. Not where we are, but they're gonna be in it because it is it is gonna be massive, massive industry.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, congratulations on the vision. Uh, you are the first mover out there, and uh here's your success in helping uh existing and future crypto holders. Thanks, Jeffrey.

SPEAKER_01:

My pleasure. Thanks for having us on. I look forward to seeing you again soon, Evan. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

And thanks everyone for listening, watching, checking out our companion TV show, techimpact.tv on Bloomberg and Fox Business. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Jeffrey. All right, see you soon.