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In this high-energy Hot Topics episode of The Edge of Show, host January Jones is joined by Isabel Castro, creator of Utopia and Beta, and Danny Baer, Director of Wealth and Asset Management at Meanwhile Bitcoin Life Insurance, for an illuminating discussion that cuts across Bitcoin ETFs, corporate Bitcoin treasuries, crypto millionaires, and Bitcoin-based life insurance.
From the SEC’s accelerated approval process for crypto ETFs to the growing trend of companies holding Bitcoin in their balance sheets, the trio explores how mainstream adoption is changing both individual wealth and institutional strategy. Danny Baer dives into Meanwhile’s pioneering Bitcoin-denominated life insurance, which allows policyholders to leverage their digital assets without selling them — offering a new model for wealth preservation in the Web3 age.
With Isabel’s journalist insights on crypto culture and January’s sharp moderation, this episode captures the pulse of today’s decentralized economy — where finance, freedom, and innovation collide. Whether you’re a Bitcoin maximalist, ETF investor, or just crypto-curious, this one’s packed with clarity, humor, and actionable insight.
Key Topics Covered
- Bitcoin ETF Expansion and Mainstream Access:
The SEC’s new listing standard shortens crypto ETF approval times, allowing tokens like Solana and XRP to join Bitcoin and Ethereum, creating a massive bridge for mainstream adoption. - Corporate Bitcoin Treasuries and Institutional Strategy:
Companies like Strive Inc and Semmler Scientific are merging to become major Bitcoin holders, marking a shift where corporate treasuries treat BTC as a long-term reserve asset. - Crypto Millionaires and a New Wealth Class:
Over 240,000 global crypto millionaires are redefining wealth, lifestyle, and legacy — with many seeking ways to use Bitcoin without losing sovereignty or selling. - Meanwhile Bitcoin Life Insurance Model:
Danny Baer explains how Meanwhile created the world’s first Bitcoin-denominated life insurance — allowing users to borrow, grow, and protect their Bitcoin wealth in a fully regulated system. - Cultural Shifts in Web3 Wealth:
Isabel Castro highlights the evolving mindset of young crypto millionaires — from meme traders to long-term thinkers building families, businesses, and legacies in Bitcoin.
Episode Highlights
“ETFs are a bridge for average people to safely enter crypto — this is a milestone for mainstream access.” — January Jones
“If Bitcoin is to reach billions of people, lowering the entry barrier through ETFs is critical.” — Danny Baer
“Crypto is borderless. People will always find a way to get the exposure they want.” — Isabel Castro
“Trust is our most important social currency. That’s why we built Meanwhile on the Bitcoin standard.” — Danny Baer
“The new class of crypto wealth isn’t just about luxury — it’s about planning for generational value.” — January Jones
People and Resources Mentioned
- Danny Baer — Director of Wealth & Asset Management, Meanwhile Bitcoin Life Insurance
- Meanwhile Insurance
- Isabel Castro — Creator of Utopia and Beta
- January Jones — Host, The Edge of Show
- SEC — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Cointelegraph
- MicroStrategy
- Henley & Partners
About Our Guest
Danny Baer is the Director of Wealth and Asset Management at Meanwhile Bitcoin Life Insurance, the world’s first regulated Bitcoin-denominated life insurance company. Based in Bermuda, Meanwhile empowers Bitcoin holders to borrow, grow, and protect their digital wealth without selling it — offering 90% loan-to-value ratios and fully audited Bitcoin reserves. A longtime advocate of self-sovereignty and financial freedom, Danny has spent years building bridges between traditional finance and decentralized assets, helping individuals and families create sustainable, tax-efficient Bitcoin-based financial plans.
Guest Contacts:
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dannybaer
- Website: meanwhile.btc
- Twitter (X): x.com/Meanwhile_BTC
Transcript:
January Jones: Welcome to Hot Topics on the Edge of Show. I'm January Jones here with my special co-host, Isabel Castro, creator of Utopia and Beta. Happy to have you. Happy to be here. We met running around crypto conferences in the last year, and so she's a great journalist, really good, in-depth content on her blog. It's for readers. It's for people who like to read. I really appreciate your writing. It's great to have your insights with us. We also have Danny Bayer from Meanwhile Bitcoin Life Insurance, and he's the Director of Wealth and Asset Management. Thrilled to have you here, too, Danny.
Danny Baer: Yeah, thank you so much. I'm a big fan of Isabelle's. I can barely read, so it's hard for me to get through all of her writing. But when I sound out all the words, it's always a good signal. So pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on January.
Isabelle Castro: Thank you, Danny. That's really kind. Coming up, we will talk about the ETF explosion, Bitcoin treasury growth, crypto millionaires, and we'll hear from Danny about Meanwhile.
January Jones: This is another production of the Edge Hope Company, a rapidly growing media ecosystem, empowering the pioneers of Web3 technology, culture, and innovation. Let's get into it. So starting off with big news for crypto exchange traded funds or ETFs, the US SEC has introduced a new generic listing standard that dramatically shortens the approval time for crypto ETFs, allowing products that meet their criteria to launch in as little as 75 days instead of up to 270 days. Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs became available just in 2024, and now with the SEC change, we expect to see other cryptocurrencies like Solana, XRP, and Cordano ETFs coming very soon. So I think this is major and important because ETFs have become a bridge for so many average people to more safely get involved in crypto. And as we're seeing all the laws in our country change to accommodate crypto, I think we really need to make sure that people aren't left behind. And this is another step towards access, especially rolling in these other cryptocurrencies, right? and expanding those options because they're maybe more affordable, let's say, than Bitcoin ETFs. Danny, what are your thoughts?
Danny Baer: Yeah, I think from my perspective, this is just greater evidence. and for access to digital assets. We as an industry have faced pretty significant headwinds from a regulatory perspective, from as long as I've been working in the broader digital asset ecosystem, which is coming up in four years, but certainly before that as well. And I think that it's just, it's prudent from a regulatory perspective to provide clear rules around what it actually takes to do something like list an ETF or to bring a company public. So many of the companies in the past have done their best to try to comply with the regulatory requirements to be able to operate. And they've just been met with headache by regulators like the SEC. So I think that this is extremely positive. Not totally surprising. The Bitcoin ETF launched in January of last year is the most successful ETF launch in the history of ETFs or exchange traded funds. So I think it's natural to bring broader crypto exposure to the really the financial vehicle that is an ETF, which just allows for broader adoption and broader exposure through things like brokerage accounts.
January Jones: Isabel, you're our global citizen here, but ETFs are more common. Canada led the way, and then Europe, they're much more common. What's your perspective? Do you think the U.S. is playing catch up on this?
Isabelle Castro: I mean, no, I don't think the US is playing catch up. Like in the UK, for example, they're only just now allowing retail investor access to kind of the Bitcoin ETNs. And also in Europe, it has been a focus on ETNs rather than ETFs. So I mean, the US is the biggest ETF market, I don't think that they were always going to lead. I like the fact that regulators are finally kind of embracing the fact that crypto is here and we do need to have these regulatory standards and that people are moving fast. So if they don't create some kind of streamlined way of doing things, people are going to go down a different route instead. So yeah, I think it's a good thing.
Danny Baer: And if I may, before we move on, just jumping on this topic. So I think the beauty of crypto is that it is borderless. And what we've seen and what has been proven is that people will get access to the exposures that they want access to, regardless of what the regulatory landscape states, because I can move my myself and my family to some other country abroad. and bring all my crypto wealth with me. That's one of the value propositions of digital assets. To Isabelle's point, the ETF just allows asset managers to hold the actual underlying asset as opposed to trading, you know, getting exposure to like perps or futures, which some of these ETNs internationally already do. So I think it's overall positive.
January Jones: Yeah, well, bringing it back to mainstream adoption. So we were talking about where we're living. Danny, you're in Minnesota. So when you go out in public and people are like, oh, Danny, what do you do? What is the understanding and penetration of crypto in Minnesota of all places? I think that's a great snapshot of a lot of people in the United States. And relatedly, if you would explain how they would get involved in Bitcoin in the term of an ETF, would that be an easier path for them to understand what kind of investment is and what kind of a risk it is?
Danny Baer: Yeah, I'm the guy at like cocktail parties or dinner parties and nobody wants to sit next to it because I'm the only person that wants to talk about Bitcoin or broader digital assets. So I think it's just constant reminders when I talk to people in like when I say the real world who don't work in this industry, it's kind of a reminder of just how early we really are. I think it's easy to get lost in the echo chamber. I work at a Bitcoin only company. I spend my days speaking with people who are passionate about Bitcoin. But when you leave that kind of that fishbowl, nobody really understands or has the level of interest maybe that the people that I spend most of my time with. So I think that's a good reminder. I think that that is why these ETFs are important. Now, as a Bitcoiner, I have to put in the plug that you should want, you should have desire to be self-sovereign and custody your own Bitcoin and learn how to actually do that. But if we're talking about broader adoption, and I think the goal should be that Bitcoin reaches billions of people worldwide. And if that's the goal, then lowering that barrier to entry is critical. And offering ETFs is critical.
January Jones: Well, relatedly, let's go on to our next story. We're talking about the Bitcoin treasuries, right? The corporate treasury strategy that we're seeing all kinds of different companies adopt. And this week, Cointelegraph is reporting that Strive Inc has just made some waves with this by merging with Semmler Scientific. to become one of the largest public holders of Bitcoin, with a combined stash of nearly 11,000 BTC. As of today, that's about $1.24 billion, and that puts them in the top 10 rankings of corporate Bitcoin treasuries now. Now, at different scales, this is a trend we've been talking about all year. Like I said, it's all kinds of corporations doing this. You see science companies, tech companies like Strategy, mining, Bitcoin mining companies like Marathon, or media companies like Trump Media getting into the game. Those are all top ten holders. So we just talked about mainstreaming crypto to the public with the etfs. And so now is this the corporate version? I mean, these are really huge bitcoin holdings Danny, what do you think about what this does to overall corporate strategy because we're talking about, you know, the biggest guys in the room um as far as these holdings, but how does that translate to smaller scales and smaller companies because Like we mentioned, you don't have to be in a certain kind of company to have a corporate Bitcoin treasury.
Danny Baer: Yeah, I think there are a couple of different storylines here that are worth touching on. The first is that Strive acquired similar. Why did Strive acquire similar? I think that in the past, and this, I think, goes back to the regulatory clarity that maybe ETFs are providing. In the past, it was just impossible for average individuals to own Bitcoin exposure through something like a brokerage account. And so the initial explosion of these Bitcoin treasury companies were that they were basically providing a Bitcoin proxy exposure to the everyday investor that they could buy shares to a company that basically tracked the price action of Bitcoin because it held Bitcoin on its value. That's really what MicroStrategy was in 2020, 2021. Now, obviously, things have evolved since then, but those companies were trading at a premium to their Bitcoin holdings because it was basically just an ease of access. access for people to hold exposure to Bitcoin. Now, the bar has been raised. And I think that's what this what Strive is showing people now in the market is it's not enough to just own Bitcoin and have it dormant on your balance sheet. If you're going to be a Bitcoin treasury company and you want to trade at a premium to the Bitcoin on your balance sheet. you need to be active. And so that can be acquiring other Bitcoin treasury companies that are trading at a discount like Semmler was. It can be it can be the micro strategy playbook of tapping into capital markets to get cheap cash to be able to acquire more Bitcoin. So you're increasing the number of Bitcoin per share. So I think what we're going to see is that evolution is these Bitcoin treasury companies will find creative ways to put that Bitcoin to work, to generate Bitcoin denominated yield in a way that increases the Bitcoin per share without diluting their share price. holders.
January Jones: Yeah, Isabel, we were at Bitcoin Las Vegas this year. You were interviewing lots of people there during that time. What were you hearing about this trend of the corporate treasury and how that was applying to companies that were actually working in Bitcoin, right? Because we have kind of the industry insiders in that environment at the Bitcoin conference. And so We know they're all true believers. But I'm just wondering what you were hearing from people and how they were enacting that, because certainly Michael Saylor was a more divisive speaker than I thought he might be there. There's definitely a split. Everyone isn't always just, let's just keep buying.
Isabelle Castro: Yeah, I mean, the people that I spoke to were primarily kind of very positive. I think they'd gotten early, like the individuals, they got in early. So this was basically just pumping their bags. They were just happy that the price was raising and that we were going to have this increased interest from kind of corporate corporations. On the other hand, there were a couple that were concerned about it on a kind of influential scale, like if we have these big holdings of Bitcoin just centralized into these kind of companies, they have a lot of sway on the price, and they can therefore manipulate it if they want to. And I mean, you talk to anyone in the space right now, and there are people that are worried about this, and they're kind of like, oh, we can't do anything now because it's manipulated. I don't know whether they're just salty. Maybe they are. But yeah, there's definitely a split. I would say, though, generally people are very positive about it. Personally, I mean, I'm actually quite concerned, but not on the level of kind of price action and all that kind of stuff, more that it will move away from kind of these core principles that Bitcoin was introduced to us with, like sovereignty and freedom and all this kind of stuff. And a lot of people on stage were saying these words, but I don't know whether they're going to actually take them on. People at the conference, they were saying, oh yeah, they've definitely become orange-pilled, and this is the way that traditional finance and just generally the whole industry is going to go. But I don't know. I don't think they're going to let power go so easy.
January Jones: Yeah, well, we're yet to see how this plays out, right? And instead of making a split, I think we're going to see new branches, right, of the tree, so to speak. It's a different kind of way that Bitcoin is used and adopted and the people that believe in it. And true, like the scale of these companies, we're yet to see what will happen in the market, right? Well, moving on, speaking of people making their bags, crypto millionaires are on the rise, and that's no surprise given this insane year so far. A new report from Henley and Partners is putting a number on it. They are saying there are now over 240,000 global millionaires. This is up 40% in just a year, with Bitcoin holders making up the majority of this new wealthy class. But they largely aren't in the U.S., They estimate about 20% are US-based. The largest concentrations of crypto millionaires are increasingly found in friendlier hubs like Singapore, the UAE, the Caribbean, and parts of Europe, which offer more favorable tax rules. But just because they have it, it doesn't mean that they're spending it. So Danny, do you think there is something different about this new class of crypto wealth and how they behave in the world and what they're doing with their money versus kind of our perceptions of what millionaires are from Instagram and social media?
Danny Baer: Yeah, this is something we spent a lot of time thinking about. Fundamentally, we built our company to service these people. So I won't get into it too much right now because I know we will get to it. But meanwhile, as a Bitcoin denominated life insurance carrier, and really all that means is we are a company that is built around the idea that there are people in the world who have Bitcoin wealth, who want to do something with it. They want to either live off of it tax efficiently, they want to pass it on, they want to grow their Bitcoin exposure. If you have Bitcoin as an individual or an institution, and you want to do something with it, you are exactly who we're building for. And so the stats that you just laid out, the 40% increase in crypto millionaires, It's obviously not surprising. So if Bitcoin is a 2.3, 2.4 trillion dollar asset, if the broader crypto market is something like three and a half trillion dollars, you know, that is truly wealth that has been created in the world. People don't really think about it that way. 2.4 trillion dollars of Bitcoin means that 2.4 trillion dollars of wealth has been created. And up until five years ago, all of that wealth was held by individuals, not by institutions. And so what we're addressing is really the dearth of investment in financial products for those people to get access to. If I have a million dollars or 10 million or 100 million dollars of Bitcoin, my options historically were, well, I can just hold it, sit on it, hodl, do nothing with it. But that doesn't translate to the real world. You can't eat a Bitcoin. You can't live in a Bitcoin. You need to off ramp to dollars or fiat currency at some point to be able to actually enjoy the wealth that you've accumulated by being early to Bitcoin. And that's what we're building for. So, you know, I think that's what we're seeing is These people are maturing. Many of these crypto or Bitcoin millionaires got into it when they were 15, 20, 25 years old. It's now 10 years later. And instead of being in their early 20s, they're in their early 30s. Maybe they're settling down. They're having families. Their lives are changing dramatically. And they're now thinking, well, how do I actually plan with this wealth as opposed to just enjoying being rich? How do I plan for my family's future? How do I set this up for success multi-generationally as opposed to just myself? And that's really what we're building to solve for.
January Jones: Isabel, you're keen on seeing the culture of these crypto millionaires, right, traveling to these conferences, doing interviews. You interview lots of founders, right? Maybe you can give us a perspective on that. What do you see as kind of different about this new generation of crypto wealth and how they act in the world and what the kind of culture is?
Isabelle Castro: I mean, I feel like a lot of the people that I talk to, not the founders so much. The founders, I feel like they're using this newfound wealth to kind of like try and build where maybe they wouldn't have done before. But just generally like the average person that has become wealthy, it's often, especially in this last kind of year or two, it's often over the course of a couple of weeks, you know, they've made a great meme trade. And now that they've done that, and then they put it back into Bitcoin, and then they do some more. And they're still quite young. They're like, a lot of these are still quite young and they have no idea what they're doing. They're just kind of like, wow, okay, what do I do? So I mean, some of them, obviously you see the kind of classic, I'm going to get a private jet somewhere, you know, and like go to Dubai and just like spend loads of money. But you do have some people that are in that stage of life where they're just kind of like, I want to buy a house. I want to have a family at some point. And they are trying to find ways to make that happen. And like Danny said, engage in the real world and make it work within the real world. And a lot of them, they don't want to sell their Bitcoin, you know, they want to kind of have their bag. I mean, I did a couple of pieces on in the past on kind of the crypto loans. That's something that I've been following quite a lot, where people can put the crypto off as collateral and actually get money back to spend in the real world. And I feel like that's where a lot of these people are turning because they don't want to relinquish all these great assets, which they 100% believe are going to be so much more valuable, even next year. They don't want to relinquish that. And to be honest, I agree with them.
Danny Baer: Isabel, what you're describing here is really what we've built our first flagship product around is how do I live off, I've generated all this wealth in Bitcoin, We're Bitcoin specific, so I won't comment on the meme coins, Isabel, but I've accumulated all this wealth in Bitcoin. I want to live off of it. But my options right now are I can sell it and pay 20, 25 percent long term capital gains tax on that sale. And then I'm also losing that exposure. So when I believe that Bitcoin will be worth a million dollars in the next five years, I'm losing that upside exposure. Or my other option, to Isabel's point, is I can go to one of these lenders and I can borrow dollars against my Bitcoin. That market today looks something like you can get 50 percent loan to value on the Bitcoin collateral. So for every dollar Bitcoin I have, they'll give me 50 cents of dollars. They're going to charge me like 11 to 14 percent interest rate on that loan. And we all know how volatile Bitcoin is. That's actually the feature. It's not. a bug of Bitcoin. In the last year, Bitcoin's up 90 to 100 percent, and there have been multiple 30 plus percent drawdowns over that period. And so the real risk of those loans is if I'm going to hold that loan for a long time and Bitcoin's volatility corrects or the price corrects as a result of the volatility, I could get margin calls, meaning the lender will sell my Bitcoin collateral to make themselves whole on my loan. So bad outcome. bad loan to value ratio, high interest rates, and you're at constant risk of getting margin calls. So our core product is whole life insurance. People buy whole life insurance for a number of different reasons. But really, the primary use case of whole life insurance is to use as collateral to borrow against. But the beauty of our product is The life insurance is denominated in Bitcoin. So you're getting that Bitcoin exposure, your collateral is Bitcoin. But when you take out a loan against it, you don't borrow dollars out, you borrow Bitcoin out. But the Bitcoin that you receive as that loan gets a cost basis set to whatever the price of Bitcoin is at that time. So you can sell it tax free. So if I put my Bitcoin into the whole life insurance policy today at $111,000, and if in five or 10 years Bitcoin is a million dollars, I would just borrow Bitcoin against using my policy as collateral and borrow Bitcoin out. It would be worth a million dollars. Its cost basis would be a million dollars. So I could sell it tax free. Now, we offer a 90% loan to value. Our interest rate is 3%. But I think most importantly is that loan and the collateral are both in Bitcoin. So I'm never at risk of getting margin called. My loan is not a million dollars. It's one Bitcoin. So if the price of Bitcoin drops from a million to 600,000, a 40 percent correction, I'm not going to get margin called. Instead, I would likely just take my million dollars of cash that I sold that original Bitcoin for, buy a 600,000 dollar Bitcoin and use that one Bitcoin to repay my one Bitcoin loan.
January Jones: So Danny, this is a novel idea. From the research I did, I really couldn't find any other life insurance that is using this model. So we know that, you know, things are moving fast and, you know, it's just in the last year, you could really do anything with your Bitcoin. Why have you guys positioned yourself in the market like this? And what are you guys doing to build credibility? Because if you are the only one, then that also has to come with building a lot of trust.
Danny Baer: Yeah, I always say that trust is our most important social currency. So I 100% agree with you, January. But where I would maybe pivot or correct you a little bit, respectfully, of course, is that it's not a novel idea. Life insurance is the oldest financial savings product in the world. You can go anywhere in the world and buy life insurance in any currency that you want. We're just the first to do it using Bitcoin as a currency, but it's a centuries old financial product. So what are we doing to gain trust of our policyholders and our customers? We're doing everything in a highly, highly regulated fashion. We have built this company in Bermuda. Bermuda is like the global hub for insurance and reinsurance carriers. You've got Main Street, Hamilton, Bermuda, downtown Bermuda. Chubb International, AIG, Athene, Swiss Reinsurance, Munich Reinsurance, all these massive global insurance or reinsurance carriers are based there and are regulated by the same regulator that oversees us. We comply with every regulatory requirement. We operate as a fully licensed and regulated life insurance carrier. We just simply use Bitcoin as our currency. Our entire balance sheet is in Bitcoin. We became the first company in the world. We actually state our externally audited financials in satoshis. So how are we building trust? We're building trust by doing everything truly on the Bitcoin standard. And we're doing it all within the regulatory requirements of our world leading regulator.
January Jones: Right. So you're walking the walk, right? You're living the Bitcoin lifestyle, leaving that trail of breadcrumbs out there for people to really see what's going on. And so that's what we like to see in this industry, because obviously you're a true believer. And like we said, it's getting bigger, this industry. We try to make this show a little something for everybody, people who are getting New to it and then we like to have like the diehard People in here as well to really and hold up some of those cultural things right like Isabel was talking about and so It's a bigger discussion than a lot of people realize to kind of incorporate all these new things that are coming in and And people have a lot of opinions about what is important in this space. So I appreciate you both joining today for these perspectives. We got into quite a few things. We covered the ETF explosion, the Bitcoin treasury growth, crypto millionaires, and we talked about Bitcoin life insurance. I'm january here with my co-host isabel castro from utopia and beta and our guest danny bear from meanwhile Stay curious keep pushing boundaries and don't forget to subscribe to us on your platform of choice and follow in socials So you never miss what's next on the edge of show?
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