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Meet Teambrella, the first peer-to-peer insurance service powered by Bitcoin (self.Bitcoin)

paperno が 投稿

Hi!

After a year of work we’re out of stealth mode. We believe that our system sets up a new very high standard of fairness and transparency that is unachievable by any insurance company that is not cryptocurrency-based. We’re currently polishing the system so an alpha will probably be ready in Q2.

There’s an explainer video at our site: http://teambrella.com

And here is our white paper (it’s only 17 pages): http://teambrella.com/whitepaper.pdf

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[–]BitcoinIsLiberty 7ポイント8ポイント  (10子コメント)

Cool, so not only is bitcoin going to help the unbanked but the uninsured too!

[–]hardforkintheroadredditor for 13 days [スコア非表示]  (9子コメント)

How exactly does Bitcoin help the unbanked ?

[–]zcc0nonA [スコア非表示]  (8子コメント)

well when you don't have an ID or otherwise can't get a bank account, say there are no banks in your town in Africa, then it is a lot harder to save money, as you run the risks of storing and maintaining it. Also you can't spend money at places that only accept bank money or are far away.

So, because you can get btc on your cell phone and use it where there are no banks, it helps unbanked use electronic money.

[–]hardforkintheroadredditor for 13 days [スコア非表示]  (7子コメント)

So people in Africa can suddenly afford five or ten UsD cents per transaction ? And they have the internet connections available to use Bitcoin ?

You have NO idea what you're talking about. MPeSA is perfectly suited to African commerce and Bitcoin is so far from usable for Africans it isn't even funny.

In case you weren't aware Africans already have cell phone money that works so well for them that millions of them use it and millions of merchants accept it. Bitcoin will never penetrate that network effect considering how awfully suited it is for their economy.

[–]inviolinable [スコア非表示]  (5子コメント)

That is a very poor argument. People in African nations with access to the internet via a smart phone will be well served by the Bitcoin network. The number of people in African nations with smart phone internet is accelerating rapidly.

Bitcoin is still an experimental start up currency so it may be some years before it is stable enough and the ecosystem around it mature enough for people near the poverty line.

However, corporate-owned, highly regulated, mobile money will prove to be about as much of a competitive threat to Bitcoin as the corporate-owned, highly regulated telcoms were to the internet.

[–]hardforkintheroadredditor for 13 days [スコア非表示]  (4子コメント)

People in African nations with access to the internet via a smart phone will be well served by the Bitcoin network.

No, they won't. The already have mobile money that perfectly suits their needs without requiring Internet access or worrying about price volatility. Bitcoin transaction fees are already today much higher than MPeSA and that's with a block reward subsidizing them. You honestly have no idea what you're talking about.

Why in the fuck would they use Bitcoin when it costs more, changes in value, absolutely requires the Internet to use and no merchants accept it? It's a loser in every category compared to what they already have

[–]inviolinable [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

Welcome to Reddit :)

I'm not convinced you are being honest, frankly. I'll let you skip over most of my points and, what's more, I'll re-address your old, many-times-covered 'points' again. No need to thank me.

If your only arguments for Mpesa (and against Bitcoin) are fee costs and volatility, then I recommend you spend little more time understanding Bitcoin development and economics 101 and less time telling strangers on the internet that they don't understand Mpesa or Africa.

The Bitcoin whitepaper can explain why Bitcoin is preferable to Mpesa even with higher fees: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The lightning network paper can explain how the Bitcoin network will provide wonderfully cheap transactions: https://lightning.network/

As for volatility, well, all I could offer is Wikipedia which would be too insulting.

[–]hardforkintheroadredditor for 13 days [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

Lol it's much easier to link documents and expect them to make an argument for you, isn't it? Neither white papers explain why Africans would use complicated Bitcoins rather than familiar MPESA. Neither documents explain why Africans would pay more to use Bitcoin. Neither document explains why Africans will use Bitcoins when nobody there accepts it and everybody uses MPESA. Neither document explains why Africans would buy bitcoins, experience volatility and then spend them just to do the same commerce they can do today without the volatility. Again, you have no clue what you're talking about. You haven't made a single cogent argument because you're incapable, all you can do is offer random irrelevant links and pretend you actually made a point. Pretty pathetic.

Like your argument was literally "poor Africans don't mind higher fees"...how stupid can you be? Unlike yourself I've actually taken college economics courses and don't simply link people to irrelevant white papers and pretend Bitcoins problems don't exist. You're piss-poor at making an argument.

[–]inviolinable [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

I summarised your claims, made counter-claims, and cited references. What did you do?

This has been fun. We should do it again some time.

[–]hardforkintheroadredditor for 13 days [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Again, your idiotic counterclaim was "Africans don't mind higher fees" - do you really think you won this argument ? You're obviously a complete idiot

Linking to a white paper and saying "somewhere in here your points are refuted. I think" isn't an argument. It's actually pretty sad that you think it is, and it's rather telling of your age and intellectual capacity.

[–]bitcoinxbt [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

never is a strong word

[–]paperno[S] 5ポイント6ポイント  (9子コメント)

The tl;dr version of our white paper:

  • Insurance companies and policyholders have conflict of interests. We propose a peer-to-peer insurance organization devoid of this conflict.
  • Teams: Anyone can create a new team. Existing members decide who they want in their team.
  • Voting: Everything in a team is governed via voting. The weight of a teammate's vote depends on premiums she has paid.
  • Liquid Democracy: Teammates can delegate their votes to proxies. Those who do vote receive a reward so they can do this professinally.
  • Risk Coefficients: Each teammate is assigned a risk coefficient by the team via discussion and voting.
  • Fair P2P Coverage: If two teammates have same risk coefficients they cover each other for the same amount. If one is less risky, e.g. a good driver, she gets more coverage from the other.
  • Distributed Wallets: A multi-sig wallet controlled by the owner AND 3 out of 8 of his teammates. Wallet owner can veto any transaction. He is allowed to withdraw funds provided all outstanding premiums can be paid out. We coordinate payments but it's teammates who really make them.
  • Protection: Our open-source client software allows teammates to collectively withdraw their funds if the server is compromized or shutdown.

[–]standardcrypto [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

very interesting.

brings to mind the lodge system of old (elks, shriners, masons, hundreds of others) :

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2006/11/politics-rebuilding-civil-society.html

which is how insurance used to work, local level, before it got all big and institutionalized

[–]jonstern [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Should be able to adjust the multisig to higher consensus and vice verse.

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

The multisig here is a tool of enforcement of higher consensus.

[–]Ubergobredditor for 0 hours [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Are you Jared Mimms?

[–]mommathecat [スコア非表示]  (4子コメント)

We propose a peer-to-peer insurance organization devoid of this conflict.

It's not devoid of the conflict, you've merely shifted the risk of fraud from the insurance company entirely to the peers. Who's going to investigate that insurance claims are valid?

A multi-sig wallet controlled by the owner AND 3 out of 8 of his teammates.

Cool, so if you have half your team of scammers, and half who are the marks, the scammers can rip off the marks, rinse, repeat.

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

From our whitepaper: Teammates are not limited with a standard set of verification procedures and may require any amount of additional proofs. Also, fraud against peers is much less tolerated than against "the system": 10 percent of Americans agree that “insurance fraud doesn’t hurt anyone.

Re multisig: Nobody can move your funds without you signature. You need at least 3 out of 8 honest cosigners to get you funds back. So, even if you somehow manage to join such a bad team, even 5 scammers out of 8 your cosigner can't do you any harm. Also, small teams are invite-only.

[–]hardforkintheroadredditor for 13 days [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

It's a noble effort and an interesting concept but this idea is DOA. You'll never make it through all the hoops and red tape of insurance regulation and no venture capitalists will touch something so destined for failure.

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Our somewhat limited research made us believe that we're not a subject of insurance regulation in most jurisdictions - we don't sell polices, we don't hold clients' money, we don't pay money.

In fact, most of other bitcoin business are more affected by various regulations.

[–]hardforkintheroadredditor for 13 days [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Our somewhat limited research made us believe that we're not a subject of insurance regulation in most jurisdictions -

Holy shit you can't be serious. This insurance is never going to be considered valid. Insurance is not a garage operation and you can't fly by he seat of your pants assuming what you're creating has any validity at all in the real world. This is so rife for problems and fraud it's never getting off the ground, a noble idea but you need to talk to a lawyer who knows their stuff and not just one happy to take your money until the music finally stops for you

[–]Username96957364 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

I'm interested, but I'm curious as to how risk modeling is done in a way that users can understand. Insurance companies tend to have very complex risk assessment strategies, and I'd be surprised if the average user could comprehend them.

How is that handled?

[–]paperno[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Most of the users would probably delegate their votes to professionals who could use their favorite risk modelling software. These pros would benefit from doing it in most transparent and fair manner. This way they would get more users to entrust them with the voting.

[–]yoCoin 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Maybe teams would hire freelance actuaries? I'm also concerned about dispute resolution and other legal issues. The existing system is flawed, but I still prefer to deal with professionals if my house burns to the ground, not a bunch of teammate amateurs.

[–]paperno[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yes, the teams can do this. This functionality won't probably be integrated in the first releases, but it's already in our timeline. Ideally, most of the work in our system would be done by professionals. It's just they would have to do it in a very transparent, friendly and fair manner - otherwise they would be instantly "fired" by users who no longer trust them.

[–]TicToxic 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

So. Many. Questions! But I'm excited. Opted in - looking forward to getting more concrete info/pricing.

[–]paperno[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

We're definitely not taking any fees while we're in alpha or beta stages. After that our fee would be nowhere near the amount that is taken by regular insurance companies.

[–]lclc_ [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Since it's multi-sig between the peers, how would you take fees?

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

The peers would need to sign transactions scheduled by the system if they want to continue to use our services. Once a claim is settled, the system distributes who pay to whom: Some would pay for the claim, some would compensate the voters and some would pay the fee. Note: We're considering various monetization models. Taking fees directly from all teammates is just one of them.

[–]paperno[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thank you Vimeo. Perfect timing to get offline.

[–]giszmo [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Looking forward to see this succeed. Necro-posted.

[–]MrRGnome [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

This is a really great idea, but I have some questions. Why does the policy management system go through central servers? Wouldn't this network be better served by a policy management and propogation protocol?

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

We played with the idea at the beginning. And while it's probably feasible it is much more difficult to implement. Basically, a server is very effective at finding and enforcement of consensus.

[–]MrRGnome [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Don't take this the wrong way, but at first glance it seems you have taken a brilliant idea and made it worse so you have an avenue to profit from it. You have clearly built something of worth and deserve to get paid for it, but why shouldn't I think that? I would be really interested in seeing a similar solution implimented in a decentralized manner.

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Making it 100% decentralized would make it much easier for us to crowdfund through a presale of tokens - same way as Factom and GetGems did.

I mentioned just one reason for us to make it server-dependent. There were quite a few others:

  • hard/not possible to use social network accounts to login => only semi-anonymous users
  • a requirement for client software to be online most of the time
  • a need for storage of pictures/proofs for enrollment applications and claims.
  • hard/not possible to track/prevent over-insurance
  • hard/not possible to fight ddos and spam attacks

As you can see, we really did investigate the possibility.

[–]brighton36 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

Will you be crowfunding?

[–]paperno[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Probably, if we don't get a VC deal anytime soon

[–]cartmanbutters [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Cool idea. Two problems I see are 1/ Russian team and 2/ .NET stack. Who's going to crowdfund or VC fund a Russian team?

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

One of us lives in Sweden. And there's no way we would incorporate in Russia. We can continue with "friends and family" money as we did for the last year, but additional funding can help us with the first mover advantage.

[–]PeerCoverNZ [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

Hey Teambrella, I'm gonna add you to my list of p2pInsurers DM if:

  • you want to opt out of being on the list.

  • you want to join p2pInsurance founders (+others) for our twitter chat - first one kicks off later this week

  • if you are interested in collaborating on a bitcoin p2p life insurance concept I'm working on

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Hi! Sure, thank you. Please keep me updated on the twitter chat.

[–]PeerCoverNZ [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

I just sent the twitterchat reply to @teambrella1 - timing might not be great as it had to work for New Zealand & North America (e.g. friendsurance & TongJuBao can't make it) You are now on the list ps best way to get hold of me is via email peercovernewzealand@gmail.com

[–]jpmullet [スコア非表示]  (5子コメント)

Is this not just a pooled insurance fund that you and some friends can all just throw in on? If not, why would I use teambrella and not just pool some money together with my team(friends/family).

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (4子コメント)

While you can create a team that consists of exclusively your friends and family, there's no limit to number of teammates. We hope that most teams would be big enough to handle most standard insurance use cases - but at a fair price and with no bureaucracy.

[–]PeerCoverNZ [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

Distributed is the way to go but what about limits on multi-sig, or is this addressed via a pool of pools concept?

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

Not quite sure what limits you're referring to. We use 1 + 3 out of 8 multisig for big teams. For a really small team it could be 1 + 1 out of 2. So in big teams we select 8 teammates that have some funds on their own distributed wallets, i.e. "have something to lose". If one of the 8 withdraw his funds or become inactive, we switch him to another teammate in all multisigs he co-controlled.

[–]PeerCoverNZ [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Ahhh, I get it, for each claim, the multi-sig authority is given to random members of the pool. So even if there are 1,000 members, it comes down to 8 random members, of which 1 + 3 need to approve. Hence, just like the blockchain proof of work, randomness creates safety in the crowd.

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Not for each claim, no. A new wallet is generated when a peer joins a teem. And it's not a complete randomness. We check that the ones with almost no money can't co-control a big wallet. Also we aim to reduce clustering of cosigners, i.e. not creating an independent group of 30 peers in a team of 1000 members.

[–]Vankirredditor for 13 days [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

Great idea! I see a lot of opportunities here. There are many spaces for insurance which are not interesting for insurance companies due to different reasons. Using your peer-to-peer service everybody can find like-minded people to build their own insurance network. Is my understanding correct?

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

Yes, you're spot on. Insurance companies have huge overhead for each customer, so they make it cost-prohibitive to buy a policy if you don't fit in their "grand scheme of things".

[–]Vankirredditor for 13 days [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Sounds tremendous although do you already have some particular use cases? I mean some things which could be insured with your service at very first stage? I think that people won't use it for 'expensive' insurance like life insurance or car insurance although I would probably put some money to insure my bitcoins from significant drop down (keeping in mind of bitcoin volatility ;) ) during certain period of time or probably use it for insurance of some other financial tools. I probably need to think more about the use cases but I like that this service looks like a Lego toy which allows building very different kinds of insurances.

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

I think that the perfect starting use case is the pet insurance. Another one is small-damage car insurance that is below a regular deductible of, say, $500.

On a side note, even if you insure an expensive object, you don't have to insure 100% of it. You can insure just 1% of it to try how it works. If you fill like it you can increase or reduce the coverage ratio at any moment. (Though raising the coverage won't go into effect immediately - for fraud prevention)

[–]Fiach_Dubh [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

could you create teaming teams? such that you have a system of interconnected team nodes willing to share in extreme cases of liquidity need for the entire system, subject to the voting consent of the team majority?

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

Not sure, but it looks a bit over-complicated.

Actually, there is no such thing as "extreme cases of liquidity need" in our system. Teammates' coverage is adjusted all the time, so they can't claim for an amount that the system is not able to pay out. If a teammate's coverage gets too low (e.g. <90%), he can opt-in to get notified, so he can add funds to his wallet.

[–]Fiach_Dubh [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Actually, there is no such thing as "extreme cases of liquidity need" in our system.

This is a concerning statement, considering such costs of uninsured medical expenses in the united states. You tackle that issue and you'll have yourself a platform operating in the real world, not just in your system.

Think bigger. how would your system address an uninsured heart transplant expense in the united states?

[–]paperno[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Our system is not without limitations. We may change to an ubiquitous solution as we grow, but currently we have to focus on more startup-friendly use cases.

[–]Jenncksonredditor for 2 months -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Nice introduction, I'll read more about this.