Travis John (00:01.274)
Okay, welcome back to another episode of the Real World Assets Show. Today we have special guests, Cole Snell, CEO and founder of Infineo, and Dr. Robert Murphy, the Chief Economist at Infineo. So today we're going to talk quite a bit about digitizing the three trillion legacy life insurance industry and on the Provenance Blockchain, a purpose -built blockchain that's specifically for financial assets. And Infineo is doing this in a lot of different ways, not just revolutionizing the blockchain.

but also using AI on their platform to do several things that we'll get into during this talk. So welcome Cole, welcome Dr. Murphy.

Cole (00:39.735)
Thanks for having us, folks.

Bob (00:39.79)
Thanks for having us.

Travis John (00:41.562)
Great. So I know we chat, I met you Cole in Miami and we've had a few chats about what you're up to and really exciting stuff. So I knew this dates back to 2021. This is not either one of your guys first rodeo in this space. So it's an exciting event, but I know we're going to talk about your first life insurance policy that was tokenized just as of June 1st. We're going to get into that, but why don't we just start with kind of the origin story, obviously.

kind of typical podcast format, like how'd this start and what was the idea and the moment that this took off.

Cole (01:20.247)
Yeah, for me it was, I'll give you a kind of a brief founder story. And by the way, it's just, it's super cool that there's an actual RWA podcast.

Now, I think that's just great job, Travis, for standing this up and, you know, drawing awareness. We all know that RWA is early still, and, you know, it's great that you're creating a community and an environment for people like us to collaborate with other people because, you know, to move this forward, it's really about collaboration and it's not about competition. These are two C words in any industry that have to be very well timed. There's a time to collaborate.

Travis John (01:35.386)
Thank you.

Cole (02:00.009)
collaborate and there's a time to compete and I'll tell you the people in RWA that can collaborate are the people that are going to get to the prize. They're going to become billionaires sooner than anyone else looking at it as competition. So thanks for creating an environment for us to collaborate with other people. Origin story was...

Travis John (02:18.17)
Thank you.

Cole (02:24.151)
a career in healthcare and then a career in food and now a career in finance. The healthcare career led to the food. It was like, well, to be healthy, exercise, eat well. The exercise piece was tangible, go for a walk, buy a pair of shoes, pretty easy to do, kind of easy to afford. Food was a conundrum, can't find it, can't afford it, don't like the taste of it, don't know how to cook it, don't know where to buy it. And then,

you know, solved that, had an exit in healthcare, had an exit in food. And then it was, you know, my sales team and food coming to me saying, you know, we got a problem. I go, what is our food not delicious or nutritious? And they said, no, it's nutritious and delicious. It's just people can't afford it.

I go, so I used to think food was the lowest common denominator. If you don't eat, you die. And I realized, yeah, sure, if you don't eat, eventually you'll die. But if you don't have money, you can't buy food. So really, what mattered more? And that's kind of where I sold the food business and moved into the financial industry. And that's where I met Bob, Dr. Murphy.

is because my financial advisor at the time said, you know, you got, Cole, you got a problem. You've got, you know, cash in a checking account in a bank. And here's why that's an issue. I go, where do I put it? And he said, life insurance. I went, what? He goes, yeah, go read this guy's books. And it was Bob's book. He's my financial advisor. Go read Bob's books. And he'll teach you about Austrian economics and how to control your capital. And then it was meeting Bob and then

learning from him and then getting into crypto and you know leveraging life insurance and staking crypto and I'm realizing you know one of these things is like 150 years old and one of them is like at a time like seven or eight years old and I'm going this is the exact same thing it's just totally different so what would happen if you put it together and well that was in Infineo so Bob you want to maybe share how

Bob (04:25.824)
Yeah, sure. Yeah. So from my end of things, I'm an academic economist. I thought I was just going to be a college professor teaching economics for my career. I got disillusioned with academia, went in the financial sector. And then at some point, somebody introduced me to this concept. It was called infinite banking. People may have heard different terms for it. But yeah, it's using.

Travis John (04:26.106)
That's beautiful.

Bob (04:49.166)
permanent life insurance as a cash management vehicle. And I, at first, it didn't make sense to me. I studied it more. yeah, this does make sense. And so I helped co -develop a training program to train financial professionals into how to properly structure these policies. And also like to explain, this is the way you should talk about it to your clients so it's your compliant, but also, you know, they understand how the thing works, you know? So that's what we did. Cole was one of the graduates of that program. So then when he founded that in Infineo, he reached out to me and also,

On the side, I had also done work on the economics of Bitcoin. And so Cole said, Bob, you know, what we're doing, what I'm doing this company in Infineo is we're taking whole life insurance and putting it on the blockchain. And since you know the economics of both of those areas, you know, you got to be involved. And I met the team was blown away by all the people he'd recruited already and said, yes, I got to be part of this. So that's that's how it started. And, you know, just. just.

the benefits of using whole life policies the way that we had discovered there were frictions involved that by putting it by tokenizing it, putting it on the blockchain just opens it up to everybody on planet earth was an internet connection.

Travis John (05:59.77)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, I've interfaced with multiple of your team members and, you know, definitely you have put together a who's who of what's going to work and what's going to succeed. So, you know, definitely.

I commend you you on that for sure. And that's one of the big things is having, you know, not first time founders, having academics, having, you know, the right legal structure, picking the right technology and blockchain like the Provenance where there's already been a success with other brands like Figure and other HELOC lock loans and stuff. So this is, you're not blazing trails that haven't already been blazed. You know, yeah, you're first and you're new, but I do like that. It's a very calculated aspect, you know, wouldn't be surprising of course, cause we're talking about

life and I think it's important that we kind of just back up and talk a little bit about you know why whole life like not everybody understands life insurance or how important like what kind of cash management vehicle permanent life insurance is and can be so why don't we just talk a little bit about that and you know give some insightful aspects of what this is all about.

Cole (07:05.815)
I'll tell a personal story and then I'll let the smart guy talk about the economic side of it. The peace of mind, I own 14 whole life insurance policies personally, and the peace of mind that I have owning these policies as an entrepreneur, as a father, as a spouse, as a business partner.

I feel very responsible. I sleep really well at night knowing that if I fail as a spouse, as a father, as a business partner, something has my back and something has my counterparty's back as well. I feel very de -risked, let's put it that way. And it's not just because of the death benefit that's tied to it or if I get hit by a bus and a bunch of people become millionaires. That's what I do.

wonderful. It's just because of the control that I have over my capital. The capital that I have in my life today. The money, the cash that I have in my life today.

My capital lives inside of life insurance policies. I leverage it out of the life insurance policies to make private equity investments, to buy my Starbucks, pay my cell phone bill. How you do it, it's kind of, I can get into the specifics.

you know, some time as to, you know, how that all looks, there's some logistics that have to occur, but it's, you know, it's definitely possible. so yeah, I think for me, the answer to the question is, is peace of mind. And I not, that's something that I know Bob and I wanted to share with the world is using blockchain primarily and AI. The blockchain is the, is the key piece of it that makes it happen. The AI is just the thing that kind of moves it along kind of exponentially, but the blockchain is the foundation of, by way of.

Cole (09:00.713)
which the democratization of these feelings that I'm describing can exist for people all around the world. And then maybe Bob can weigh in more kind of economically on that.

Bob (09:12.526)
Yeah, sure. Just to give more of the nuts and bolts of like, how is it possible what Cole's talking about? So just real basic in case some of your listeners don't know. So your term policy is what people mostly think of as life insurance that, yeah, you got a million dollar death benefit for 30 years. I keep paying my premium payment. If I happen to die in that span, the payment goes to the beneficiary. But if I outlive that, the policy expires and I walk away. Whereas a whole life policy.

it's for your whole life. And so, you know, as long as you keep making your premium payments, it's always going to be enforced. And so the beneficiary is getting paid at some point, you just don't know when. And so part of the deal with that is with each payment you're making in just the passage of time, there's what's called a cash surrender value that keeps marching upward and it can't go down. And so that's if you happen to turn the policy and they give you a spot payment, that's like a discount relative to the face death benefit. And another

interesting feature with these policies that's built in contractually is the carrier will make loans to you with that underlying cash surrender value as the collateral, you know, a specified interest rate contractually. And it's an attractive rate because from the carrier's point of view, that loan is the safest thing imaginable. Like you can't default on it because they themselves are the ones who have guaranteed the collateral. They just don't know when they're getting it. If you die, then they pay themselves back before they pay the death benefit. Or if you surrender,

they pay themselves back before they give you the net cash to surrender, right? So that's why it's real safe and the interest rates attractive. They don't run credit checks or anything because they don't care. They know they're getting paid back, right? So because of that, it's a very flexible, robust cash management vehicle while you're alive, in addition to having the death benefit for your heirs and so forth. So that's the idea. There's also tax advantages that we don't need to get into, but structured properly, if you're working with an advisor who knows how to do it right,

These things are pretty nifty little devices or big ones too. And that was the idea, but there is a lot of friction. It's to get a life insurance policy, you got to pee in a cup or whatever. You know, it's, there's a lot involved. It's not just like going out and buying bonds. And so, and it's hard to get in and out of them too, right? It's a cumbersome thing. Eventually they yield in the high fours or even low five percentage points in terms of annual rates of return on the cash value relative to the premium payment. But you got to hold it for a while to get into that sweet spot.

Travis John (11:10.17)
Yep.

Bob (11:35.118)
Right. So there's a kind of thing if you do the long game and you know how to use these things, they're very convenient and for the relatively low risk of losing money on it, the rate of return is quite attractive. Like they have a high sharp ratio if you want to think of it like that. But again, it's right now a money manager couldn't say, yeah, give me $2 million of that. You know what I mean? mean? are you talking about? You got to take out policies on new people or what do you mean? So that's where Infinio Infineo in now to be able to, we've come up with ways.

to be able to say to the institutional investor, yeah, you want $2 million of exposure to this asset class, we can do that.

Travis John (12:10.17)
Yeah. Yeah. And, and like Cole and I talked about in Miami, I mean, it's just,

the cash value component and the way that whole life works, it's made for blockchain. It's made for this process. And what I also like, aside from you guys bringing seniority and academia to this and tech, is that you also did have a life insurance agency. We'll touch on that real quick. I say had, because I know that that changed and that kind of sunset. And so I know we talked about kind of bringing this up because not only do you understand all these aspects, but you also ran an

life insurance agency where you're selling and originating new policies. So maybe just give us a little bit of backstory there on what was going on.

Cole (12:54.391)
It's an interesting, yeah, and thanks for bringing that up because if you really think about what it is that we're doing here and we think about RWA, you think about real world assets. It's like, I find that so many people in our industry are putting the cart before the horse. Like they're creating the technology stack.

and they're creating the technological solution to the real world asset before they're understanding or owning the, operating the real world asset. So we wanted, you know, we don't need to go fast right now. This is the thing about this industry is that there's no pressure to go fast. There's actually pressure to go slow. It's easy to go fast. And it's very expensive to go fast. It's more responsible to go slow. So to go slow for us, meaning,

means we can be a tech company that it's still kind of like keep your friends close and your enemies closer. We can be a tech company that still owns an analog business so that we can disintermediate or add efficiencies using technology to you know the thing because we know it we understand it we understand

where technology can very specifically add efficiencies and where it cannot because you know, like it's like the question that I love the question and it's the question that when I first got into blockchain that people fortunately had some great advisors around me. This was years ago and I had ideas around blockchain and they would say you don't need blockchain for that or they would ask the rhetorical question say do you need blockchain for that? And I thought at the time this is six seven years ago you needed blockchain for everything. Well,

you don't. And to own the agency for us was really understanding the life insurance industry, you know, at its core foundational level to understand where and where we cannot apply technology blockchain primarily to add efficiencies. So it was.

Cole (14:59.031)
It was a very eye -opening experience. I would say fortunately today we do not own it. We've sunsetted it, we've learned from it, and we're better for it, I would say.

Travis John (15:10.778)
Yeah, you were telling me a bit about your part of, like you said, AI is a component. It's kind of under the cover type of components. I mean, like you said, most of this is really blockchain tech, but you do have a fairly sophisticated LLM AI, I believe at this point, that can obviously work in that capacity to help educate people that are looking to onboard their policies, et cetera, and learn about whole life.

Cole (15:39.543)
Yeah, so we have actual Dr. Murphy, now AI Bob. So we have AI Bob. And for your listeners and viewers, the avatar that we stood out that we're very proud of is really proprietary. And I would just put it, say that the most investable aspect of artificial intelligence is, and any AI tech VC will tell you that it's proprietary AI.

So the question is, is that, well, we don't raise money for AI. We primarily raise money for blockchain AI. Everyone should be doing AI. I mean, all companies should be in some degree AI. It's just that our AI happens to be really investable and really proprietary because it's actually the avatar of Dr. Robert Murphy. And like our AI is so good that you wouldn't know if this was actually Bob or AI Bob.

Bob. And yeah, so I don't want to let analog Bob way.

Bob (16:37.646)
Yeah, so thanks, Cole. You're right, Travis. So it's ultimately, I mean, we have different uses for him and for all of our products that yes, like if the public goes to our website, that they can click on something instead of just having like a chat window to help them or whatever, like, yes, you've got AI Bob there and he can make videos and things like that. And so, yes, it's a large language model that we've now just migrated to. Before it was like a GPT -4 thing, but now we've built our own internal.

model running on our servers. And so that's, that's a migration they recently made, but yeah, but it's trained. So it's got the capabilities of a GPT -4 in terms of just, you know, understanding English and knowing about the world and, you know, been trained on the internet. But then we've also given a lot much more company specific information, training it on my writings and some of my speeches and things like that. So that's what it is that it knows intimately all of our products and just the kind of the economics involved with.

why what we're doing makes sense just to guide customers or investors or whoever through the process. But it's, it is, it did kind of, when Cole first recruited me, he didn't say, I'm putting whole life and putting on the blockchain and we're going to use AI. That wasn't part of the conversation. It's just our company is a tech company and our people are so into, you know, the new things that once we realized, AI is going to revolutionize every industry, then, you know, and we want to be on the forefront. Our people quickly.

you know, enveloped it and we rolled it into what we were doing.

Travis John (18:08.442)
Yeah, that's exciting. So let's dive into these different buckets of what this really solves with the blockchain. So, you know, going back to that, I know one thing I'll kick it off with, I know just a very practical one is 7 .4 billion in life insurance benefits remain unclaimed still. And I know you guys have like an acronym for this, like a limbo or maybe an industry acronym that's called limbo, you know, where these policies are in limbo. So maybe let's talk about just...

Several things, obviously there's just quite a few things where you're going to democratize access and cost savings, et cetera, but even just a very practical thing that exists right now is something that this will be tackling apparently, right?

Cole (18:51.223)
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to think that there's over $7 billion of stranded death benefit out there that is really should be in the pockets in the bank accounts of the beneficiaries of the smart people who spent a lot of time and money and put a lot of,

Emotion into standing up these life insurance policies and they're not they're not getting paid out because simply for the most part because the life insurance company Can't find the beneficiary and the beneficiary didn't know they were the beneficiary

of this money. And so it's a good basic simple use case for blockchain. And the first product that we wanted to launch, we wanted it to be relatable, we wanted it to be emotional, we wanted it to be free. So this is free, we don't charge for this. So anybody with a life insurance policy can go to our policy ledger, just like you would send a file attachment to a friend via email, you can upload your life insurance policy to our policy ledger. And once your life insurance policy is held on the blockchain, the question is,

question is, well, where is the best place to hold your policy? Should it be digitalized or should it be in paper format, in a drawer or even worse, you know, in your inbox, in your server or on your hard drive somewhere? What are the likelihood that the beneficiary is going to receive the check?

if it's the policy stuck in a drawer or stuck in your hard drive. Well, if you hold your policy on the blockchain, the idea is that there's basic simple Web2 CRM integrations that when the life insured graduates from this earth dies, the policy...

Cole (20:37.143)
instantly is then emailed to the beneficiary and instructions as to who to call to go get a check. And so, you know, we're just very proud. There's a bunch of other functionality that's kind of baked into that. But we believe that the future, very simply put, is that people will hold their life insurance policies in a digital form versus a paper form to just to make sure that, you know, the value is shared.

Travis John (21:06.586)
Yeah, I mean, blockchain is a digital ledger and it's a better place to store it, like you mentioned. And as you mentioned, with some type of intermediary email system, you can obviously notify people right away if something happens. So.

Bob (21:22.894)
Right, and even beyond just the worst case scenario where they just can't locate the beneficiary or the cause of the beneficiary just didn't even know because sometimes people don't tell the beneficiaries for various reasons about that. And it's a surprise when Uncle Jim died and he left me 200 grand. But beyond that is even for people who do know that, yeah, dad had a life insurance policy. But when somebody dies and you're going to the funeral, you don't want to, in addition to planning the funeral, be

hunting around and where did he say that? What carrier was it? And you call him the carrier and what, you know, I mean, like, so this, even if it's somebody who ultimately would have been paid, we're just saving them a lot of hassle. So that's what I'm saying. Like it really makes sense. Even for people who think, no, I told my kids about the policy. They know about it. Still, you're, you know, if you're going like, you're going to all the trouble and you're being responsible and farsighted enough to have a life insurance policy, you've been funding for decades. You can also then spare your designated beneficiaries.

the hassle of fumbling around looking for the policy number when you go. This is boom, they get emailed or text message or whatever parameters you set up.

Travis John (22:30.426)
Yeah, well, not only is this just a super practical use case, but I'm just a geek about on ramps. I think this is just such a natural, smooth on ramp into the Infineo world and the kind of value that you and the team are providing because a lot of times it's like...

somebody kind of hears about something and then there's like this real clunky, you know, maybe seems difficult way to get started, but it, you know, just being able to come in and get your, get your policy on, on chain is like you mentioned, it's a very easy process and it's just a way to get started. It doesn't cost you anything. And it's a way to learn more about a video and get started from there.

Cole (23:16.759)
Yeah, like all the wallets are abstracted out. There's no.

web three interface for the end user. It's as you could upload a policy and hold it digitally, just as easy as you could send a file attachment. So it doesn't, you know, there's not, it's not intimidating. And this isn't really something unique for Infineo. This is how most modern web three user interfaces are designed today. There's a, with wallet abstraction. So you're not having to set up MetaMask or you know, various things like that. That's an example, but I think it's important to know that behind the,

the policy ledger, there's really kind of a method to our madness and why it is that we're creating this. And I appreciate you saying that, Travis, that there's a...

kind of a very fluid point of value and a very easy on -ramp for people. And we're offering this free feature. I mean, there's a method to our madness is once people are engaged into the policy ledger, what we're able to do is then also go back to them with additional features. So one of the biggest things and probably one of the most important things that blockchain solves for life insurance and why we believe the best use case for blockchain is in fact life insurance,

We've done a lot of work, we've done a lot of math and a lot of economics on why we believe this. We can back it up, we've got lots of white papers, mostly Dr. Murphy's written most of these papers and the extended team. The advantages of putting your policy on the policy ledger really are seen through the ability to trade your policy in a secondary market if need be. So.

Cole (24:57.367)
Now that you've had your policy up on chain already, you can just through the click of a button decide whether you want to sell your policy. For whatever reason, you may want to sell it. For no different reason than you may want to sell a home or a piece of jewelry or another investment. There may be time to liquidate it. Life insurance policies have been deemed as personal property since 1911. And...

If you can imagine, globally there's a three trillion dollar industry without a secondary market. There's no industry in the world that big without a secondary market.

And the life insurance industry virtually has no secondary market. I mean, technically it does, but it's very obscure and fairly misunderstood, which it's called life settlements or viaticals. But that is not what we do. We do. We are not involved in life settlements or viaticals, but we are interested in taking the average person who's 40 that has a life insurance policy that for whatever reason doesn't want it anymore, can't afford it anymore.

and wants to trade it, once you're in the system, you can now find a buyer for that policy and create a market. So we're very excited about that. And you can't do that without blockchain. That's the thing is that people have tried, even in 2017, there was a company that tried to do that using blockchain and the tokenomics and the thinking just wasn't really there yet. It is today. People have tried to do it in the analog. The friction, the administrative...

friction is so heavy that it scrapes out all the profit. So yeah, we're left today with an opportunity to put blockchain to work to create a secondary market for a $3 trillion industry. And I would say, as mentioned before, an industry that represents

Cole (26:52.343)
in my opinion without argument, the most important asset in the world. I mean I think that life insurance, you talk to any sophisticated financial advisor and they'll tell you life insurance is the most important asset in the world and not just because of the death benefit, that's a component of it.

Travis John (27:08.762)
Yeah, that's incredible.

Bob (27:08.91)
Yeah, just to follow up on that, right, because as Cole is saying right now, yes, without blockchain, somebody could, if they wanted to sell their policy to somebody else in the United States, you know, there's a right legal and regulatory framework for that. But it's a cumbersome thing. There's certain licenses that need to be involved and whatever. So it is difficult to do that. And so what we're saying is, strictly speaking, under the hood that, yes, somebody.

You know, transfers the analog. So at the carrier level, you know, there's just one change that's made. And then once the thing is digitized and we have it, you know, an SPV or whatever, and now there's a token pointing to it. And although, like Cole said before, there just wasn't the regulatory and legal apparatus, but now there are for these things. And then now that token can just trade hands. And that's much easier. And, you know, that's all above board because now it's, you know, different.

third tertiary market, right? So the point just being that it's, there's a reason in the analog world there wasn't a robust secondary market, even though these things are, you know, have tons of economic value. And now we're just really opening that up to everybody.

Travis John (28:21.498)
Yeah, I mean, it is massive, especially with the $3 trillion industry to not really have a secondary market other than maybe calling your agent and seeing if they can make a few phone calls for you and a few other things like, you know, that's really not been fluid. And as you mentioned, the blockchain is what changes that because it adds that transparency and allows that tokenized economy to transfer the asset right away. So, now it's exciting. So, we talked about some of the costs.

Maybe we want to touch a little bit more on the cost savings and efficiencies of what you're doing as well, because we touched on that a little bit. But I think it's not as sexy, but we all agree, I know, that some of the boring...

stuff is the sexiest in tokenization right now. So I think talking a little bit about the use of smart contracts and reducing the need for intermediaries, toll takers and all that stuff, I think it's really important to point this out because life insurance is no different than some of the other things like home equity lines and other things that are being used cases that are working right now.

Cole (29:31.191)
Right, so I think if I understand the question properly, it would be drawing on some similarities to what Figure has done. I mean, just to kind of, Figure have done an absolutely amazing job using blockchain to offer a more efficient key lock or second -purchased mortgage.

They offer it faster, it's better, the underwriting is potentially smoother and potentially more cost effective. So they've done this essentially by leveraging language and uniform commercial codes to account for what would be an E -lien or an E -note as collateral. So.

What is the cost savings there that either they can pass along or keep for themselves? I mean, it's basis points, but at volume, it really, really matters. Yeah, and I mean, I don't obviously work at Figure. I'm a fan of what they do.

Travis John (30:36.154)
It does, yeah.

Cole (30:43.063)
We work on the same blockchain that they do. So I'm not, you know, what what saying is probably to some degree accurate. I might be kind of screwing it up to some degree, but you could, you can take life insurance and remove, excuse me, you could take mortgages in the case of figure Figure remove that and implement life insurance. So life insurance is, is collateral. And so if someone wants to collateralize their life insurance policy, the same uniform commercial codes.

that Figure is leveraging in the language in those uniformed peripheral codes for issuing leads and you know notes notes collateral can be still used. So what is the cost savings to a you know know life insurance borrower or a lender depending on you know what side of the the trade that you're on it's probably 150 basis points or so and a massive amount of time. If it would take a month or two months to

issue the money tied to the collateralization with blockchain, it could be hours or days. So I would say that the time is arguably more valuable than the money.

Travis John (31:57.05)
Yeah.

Bob (31:57.902)
Just to give a more concrete example too of the kind of thing Cole's talking about, just to make sure your listeners are getting it, Travis, that like right now, let's say we took somebody and as Cole said, there's a group, like Cole said, he owns 14 of these policies. Okay, I don't own that many. I didn't have the exit from the food industry that he did. That's what I would have that many policies if I did, right? So there's successful people, Canadians and Americans that...

they have lots of these policies and they've got each one has a certain limit into it and they have money coming and going. But like, I know guys, they have to have Excel spreadsheets keeping track of, yeah, and then I got to make my interest payment on this policy and then I got to do this. and I borrowed money from this one. And they have a whole thing keeping track of, cause it's, you know, and they got to call or, you know, either do it online or pick up the phone for each carrier where these policies have been issued from. And that's the way they have the money coming and going. So.

Among other things, just to give one concrete example, if this person were to tokenize all of those 14 policies with us, and then work with our third party lenders who understand the nature of the collateral. So they're borrowing against their policies, not by going to the individual carrier, which is what the conventional way is right now that you would do, but instead through our network. Then, you know, it's all handled with smart contracts and whatnot. So you can't borrow more than what your cash value is that sort of thing. You know, to them, it's just one big pool.

Like they don't have to worry underneath the hood about calling, you know, because the carriers aren't even involved. The carrier doesn't even, you know, the carrier just thinks it's that SPV that owns it. So I'm just giving one example there, the kind of thing I mean. And then, yeah, you get a better interest rate if it's all of planet earth is the potential lender as opposed to what does my contract say with that one particular carrier that I bought this policy from 30 years ago. Right. So all those reasons go into why, if you understand how this works.

Travis John (33:43.834)
Yeah.

Bob (33:49.198)
in the analog world, yeah, this just supercharges it.

Travis John (33:54.938)
Yeah, I think that's a perfect transition into your first policy that you guys tokenized just as of this podcast less than a week ago. So why don't we talk a little bit about that and just kind of what this means for the life back securities and how the next steps for Infineo.

Cole (34:15.159)
The coolest coolest about tokenizing that policy was that it was done, our CTO, Zuhair, Zuhayr, it while on an Emirates flight between Houston and Dubai. So it was actually done over the Atlantic at, I don't know, 40 ,000 feet or something like that.

so yeah, that that's another example of, of technology and, yeah, it's a, it's cool. So we actually have the, our CFO actually was able to take a, like a GPS locator of the plane and stay at where he was across the Atlantic. When this like, it's, we're really geeking out on this accomplishment and capturing it. So yeah, I mean, we, we, we, it took us.

a year and a half of kind of planning planning strategizing. And yeah, last Saturday, we minted the world's first main net. We had done on test net, we had done a couple of policies policies test net, but main net digital life insurance policy on the Provenance Blockchain, tokenized life insurance policy on the, it's basically we created an NFT out of a life insurance policy.

So we have, and we're minting every day. Now that we've opened those floodgates, we're bringing more and more value to the Provenance Blockchain and value, we think, to the life insurance industry.

Travis John (35:47.13)
Yeah, that's amazing. And I know one thing that's somewhat unique to Provenance is the aspects of real time asset values, which allow you, as you mentioned in your use case already, to be able to take loans without even contacting the carrier based on using blockchain technology and being able to know what their death benefit or their cash value is, I should say, real time. Is that accurate?

Cole (36:17.015)
Yeah, you'd still have to contact the carrier. I mean, there would still be if you're if you're taking loans on the policy, there still has to be a lien issued and the carrier would have to, you know, acknowledge that lien. So, I mean, we have to be careful about people wanting the blockchain to be more than it actually is.

so it, it can do some of this stuff, but it can't do all of the stuff. Yeah.

Travis John (36:42.81)
Great.

Bob (36:48.494)
 like Cole is saying just that right now if somebody uploads their policy, that yeah, like there we have, and Infineo has not acquired legal ownership of the policy. So that, but yeah, so the stuff, what I was saying about the borrowing, that's more down the road that yeah, eventually when we get to the phase, yes, where somebody, if they do transfer legal ownership and then they have the token that's the legal claim, then yeah, you could borrow and lend against that.

Travis John (37:00.41)
Right.

Travis John (37:06.234)
Okay.

Bob (37:14.798)
directly without going through the carrier. But yeah, right now for what we have up, technically, yeah, we don't legally own their policy, so the carrier would still have to be involved.

Cole (37:25.239)
Yeah, and I just want to point out when we're starting to have this conversation, it's very important that we point out to people that, and anyone listening to this, or if it's someone from the life insurance industry or the crypto industry that...

Like at no point in time are these policies when they're minted onto a blockchain and are turned into NFTs, are they like, I'm just going to make this really blunt, turned into cryptocurrencies or liquidated in some turned into like DojaCoin or some meme token or traded in some black market somewhere. This is like not how it works. People that don't know what it is that we're doing here or talking, and it's likely someone from the life insurance industry because like I've never met a group of people

people who just are, you know, really hard nosed about.

an analog and antiquated business. And we love them, but we're here to help them in a lot of ways. So if there's anyone from the life insurance industry listening to this, trust me, these life insurance policies are safer on the blockchain than they are in a drawer or, I mean, I'll give you an example. We work very, very closely with the Life Insurance.

Commission in the Bahamas. For example, we know them very well. They've been very supportive of what we're doing. We work with various life insurance carriers and executives in the Bahamas. And a real world concern for life insurance regulators in the Bahamas are hurricanes.

Cole (39:05.239)
And there was a few instances of outer islands in the Bahamas being hit by hurricanes and paper life insurance policies being lost. And literally the Life Insurance Commission, these are a group of very, very sophisticated, very progressive people who see the merits of telling the citizens of the Bahamas,

and the carriers to hold their life insurance policies digitally on the blockchain so that they don't get lost in a in a hurricane. I mean these are like real world problems and issues that we're hearing back literally from the horse's mouth from the regulators themselves.

Right? So that's, that'll be a reason as to why you would hold your, a very pragmatic reason as to why you would digitalize your life insurance policy so that it doesn't get lost in a hurricane. I mean, it's just so simple, but hard, hard for us to kind of think about.

Travis John (40:08.794)
Yeah, that's well said. So I think the next steps, what does it look like? You know, now that we, the floodgates open, what's, paint a picture for me for what things, yes.

Cole (40:22.583)
Taking over the world, Travis.

Cole (40:27.671)
What does it look like? It looks like, I'll be very specific about this. We know exactly what it looks like. We have a very clear roadmap. We will be digitalizing massive amounts of life insurance policies, acquiring massive amounts of life insurance policies.

using them as fixed income alternatives. They have very high sharp ratios. We're going to be putting them into an SPV, again, digitalizing them and using that as a foundation to offer additional digital products on top of it.

So call it a hedge for additional products. Likely it'll look like the first product we launch will likely be a retirement product, a digital retirement product that has some amazing economic benefits built into it. So if you think about digital life insurance on the bottom and then a retirement product stacked on top of it, and then that will be the source of distribution.

But digitalizing life insurance policies really is just about democratization. It's about allowing people in emerging markets to appreciate and enjoy these assets. It's about exposure to yield, to guaranteed yield, even in a lot of cases. The life insurance industry does in fact use the word guarantee. Very few financial industries use the word. It's a very controversial word.

But there are guarantees baked in as much as you can guarantee something. It's baked into the life insurance industry and we're going to leverage that and allow people, especially in emerging markets, to enjoy the ownership of these policies and these tokens.

Travis John (42:19.034)
That's exciting.

Bob (42:20.526)
Yeah, just to amplify that, Travis, what Cole was saying, I mean, yeah, the bare bones, what are we doing? We're tokenizing life insurance. OK. And that provides benefits, like we said, for the original policyholder. But then we were just realizing once you do that and now you have the accessibility and the, you know, it's the analogy I've been using the last couple of days around the office was it's like we just invented Legos.

And we had the mind that, what if we had a thing where we just could build a house that little kids could play with. And so we shipped the box and we show this is how you take the Legos and you build a house. But then we're like, wait a minute, this is a lot bigger than just the house. You know what I mean? There's all kinds of stuff. So the same kind of thing here is once we do now open up to this asset class, which really, even though everyone's known it existed, but it just has been too cumbersome to really, it's not, it's not really easy to get in and out of and that sort of thing. Now that this thing really is versatile and mobile because of us tokenizing it.

There's all kinds of structured products you can create with it with these underlying building blocks.

Travis John (43:20.858)
Right. And some of the structured products will be institutional grade type products, I'm guessing, that see there's going to be two components to your user base at some point.

Bob (43:35.566)
Yeah, Cole, do you want to answer that one? okay. Yeah, exactly, Trav, right. It's a whole spectrum from individual household up through medium -sized business owner all the way up to, yes, huge portfolio managers. As Cole said, among other things, you get a pool of these whole life policies with certain characteristics, and we can calibrate them and get ones that are people that are younger.

Cole (43:38.039)
Go ahead. No, no, Bob, go ahead.

Bob (44:01.486)
And so that the rate of return on the cash value is higher, but then people who are older, the rate of return, the cash is as high, but now they're more likely to die. So, you know, we, we have pricing modules and so forth and you get a pool of this stuff. And that thing has a very high sharp ratio. And then, yeah, we just passed that along to fixed income investors. If they can understand it, if they can, if they're, they're allowed to own digital assets, we say this is a fixed income alternative. Among other things, there's no interest rate risk, right? Cause these policies.

the cash value keeps marching up. If interest rates shoot up, they don't go down in value unlike bonds. So in that sense, these things are safer than treasuries, at least vis -a -vis interest rate risk. So there's a lot of interesting properties once you have a way to get your hands on this thing easily, and that's what tokenization allows.

Travis John (44:48.09)
100%. Yeah. I mean, this isn't very, as you mentioned, this isn't very far up the risk curve. You know, it is like kind of lockstep with treasuries. You know, obviously there's a big appetite for even mortgages that are backed and, and packaged. And I would argue very clearly like this is even more safe, you know, from that. And, you know, there's not financial products that are easily accessible at this point for whole life. So, yeah, I think that that's really interesting.

dynamic that will unfold as you continue to grow the network.

Cole (45:20.406)
I'll tell you what the most interesting thing about it, I think is, is if you're looking at life insurance as a way to,

measure, leverage, liquidate, or evaluate something. You put money into an idea, it's underwritten by human life, medically and financially, and it spits out some economic value to it. So really, what is life insurance really? It's a way to evaluate the value of a human life, measure the value of a human life. Like really, it's kind of what it is. If you're a high net worth person, you can get more life insurance.

If you're a lower net worth person with lower credit, you can't get as much life insurance. If you have more responsibility, you can have more life insurance. If you're the founder and you have a bunch of employees, you can have life insurance on all those people. So if you think about it very holistically, life insurance is a way to leverage, evaluate, liquidate the economics of a human life in a lot of ways. So then when you tokenize the life insurance contract, what are you really doing? Right?

you're tokenizing a human life. You're using life insurance as a non -fungible token. There's nothing more non -fungible than a human life. You turn it into an NFT and then you further fractionalize that through a security token in the daylight of the SEC and the regulators. And now you're really not tokenizing life insurance. You're tokenizing the value of a human life.

And if you think of it, if you did this fundamentally, and that's why I wrote this book, Child Millionaire, years ago, was because I saw the economic value of adding, putting money into a child's life. At 15 days old, you can start to pile money into and increase the value of that life, right? And now you have the ability to further tokenize that value and democratize that value.

Cole (47:23.191)
Right? You think about generationally, if what starts to happen, it's very, very powerful. This is a solution to consumer debt. This is a solution to the uncertainty and the fears that people have around money. If this becomes the new norm.

And this is historically, I mean this strategy here has existed in North America. Child life insurance has existed. It's amazing how many people don't buy into it because they get stuck on, my God, if I put life insurance on my child, I'm acknowledging their death. How stupid is that? Unfortunately, your child's dying at some point in time. We know this, but at least as human beings, we won't come to this fundamental idea that a human life has scarcity tied to it. It just does, right? But if you're leveraging that,

And if you think about even what Satoshi said in his white paper, right, about the true elements of blockchain technology use case is peer to peer. Well, last time I looked, peer to peer meant human to human. Well, if you're evaluating a human life, peer to peer, pooling it and using blockchain and then tokenizing it, seems like a pretty darn good use case, right? Seems like we have a responsibility to buy into this. So anyways, I'm on my soapbox right now, but.

Travis John (48:37.594)
No, that's man. That was super powerful. I love that. Love that.

Cole (48:40.759)
 Yeah. I usually save that. I save that for a select. You know, it's interesting. I used to do that two years ago and even my team would look at me like I was nuts. But even over like the last two years doing that, it's interesting how I do that. And Bob has heard me do that for two years. People get it now two years ago. They thought, okay, you got to leave. You're weird. Now people get it. I couldn't say two years ago, tokenizing a human life because that's what it is that we're doing.

Travis John (49:08.474)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cole (49:10.807)
And we're just, life insurance is just the thing that allows it to happen. But today we can say it, just even your response, Travis, very interesting that you're picking that up. People like you two years ago were like, no, you gotta get off. This show will never come to air because of what you just said, you flake.

Travis John (49:16.026)
Yeah.

Bob (49:27.918)
Ha ha ha ha.

Travis John (49:30.714)
No, I'm thinking about putting this on the intro, man. This is that. That was like, I had, I had literally a goosebumps when you, that was good. No. Amen. Amen. I love that. So, so as we're closing out, why don't we do some final remarks? I know, Bob, what I know you following up to Cole's, message is, is maybe kind of hard core either one of us, but I'm going to let you go.

Cole (49:38.071)
Do with it what you will, brother. The world needs to hear it. Yeah, amen.

Bob (49:56.246)
Well, just to elaborate on what he's saying and amplify it, like it really is an economist, especially coming out of, he mentioned in the beginning, a member was called the Austrian school. And one of the big things in their history was the critique of socialism. And the problem there was, this guy Ludwig von Mises was the economist that pointed this out saying, under socialism, they don't have market prices for the means of production, whereas under capitalism you do. And that's why,

you know, capitalism works. Entrepreneurs, they know the cost of what they're putting in. So here, yeah, we're in a sense giving market prices for human capital. That's one way of thinking of it. So as an economist, like when Cole pointed out, I was like, yeah, that is kind of what we're doing. So I'm excited just like, besides I think our company's great and we're, you know, gonna reward our shareholders and help our direct customers. I think just what we're doing in other firms that, you know, copy us and do similar things.

Like we're just revolutionizing just the global economy. And we're just filling in gaps in financial markets that thus far don't even realize was a gap. So I think we're just even now just scratching the surface of how much this transformation is going to change things.

Travis John (51:09.978)
Absolutely. Cole? Okay. No, that was great. No, it's been a pleasure, gentlemen. I mean, this is a great chat and yeah, Infineo is going places. The future of finance is bright and the things that you know least about or seem least...

Cole (51:12.951)
I'll leave it at that. I think I burned all my energy on that last monologue. So yeah. Yeah.

Travis John (51:35.13)
obvious to transform the world sometimes are right in front of your face and you know, they are in fact you and the human capital so I like where this conversation started and ended and excited to continue to keep up with your success and everything you guys are doing. So thank you, Bob. Thank you, Cole.

Cole (51:55.127)
Good job guys, keep going man.

Bob (51:57.294)
Thanks for having us, Travis.

Travis John (51:58.33)
Thank you, take care, cheers.