Why I Advise: Interview with Ron Bernstein, General Manager at Coinbase

How a prediction markets pioneer fell in love with decentralized insurance and protocols.

This blog post is the first in our series of interviews with advisors at Etherisc. Recently, we interviewed Ron Bernstein, CEO of Augment Partners, a software development company focused on decentralized trading DApps, market liquidity, and blockchain data management. He is also an early advisor to the Augur Project — a decentralized prediction market built on the Ethereum blockchain. Moreover, Ron has founded Paradex.io and just joined Coinbase — a digital currency wallet and platform where merchants and consumers can transact with new digital currencies — as a General Manager. We met him at Token Summit and asked him a couple of questions.

How did you become interested in Etherisc?

I met the folks at Etherisc a couple of years ago and was fascinated by the project. It was focused on open markets and insurance, which was consistent with what I was working on at the time with Augur prediction markets.

So how did Etherisc tie into what you were doing?

Augur focuses on prediction markets, and similarly, when you’re writing insurance, you’re betting on an event that might occur. There’s a risk that exists as a premium in the insurance business, and a payout that exists as an insurance claim. I thought that the implementation of this idea on the blockchain would be amazing.

“To think about how insurance could be decentralized really fits my ethos about what a global financial system might look like.”

What other factors did you consider?

So, one of the things I consider when advising a team is how much energy and creativity it has. Clearly, these exist with the Etherisc team. I then think about the idea and opportunity the team has and how it sits within crypto. The third thing I think of is how the team and the opportunity can be multiplied to become something successful. I think all the ingredients for Etherisc are right.

Now that you’re involved with Etherisc, what goals do you envision?

One of the important things about Etherisc and the notion of decentralized insurance is it has the potential to create a really well-functioning society, that protects its participants from catastrophes. We know that catastrophes are very expensive to insure, and can, therefore, leave so many people exposed to the bad things that can happen.

So, if we can use the efficiency of the blockchain to remove some of the costs and make some of the risks more specific.

“We can do a much better job at having a society that’s protected from these catastrophes.”

We can share risks in a way that doesn’t make particular shareholders pay more than they should for their share of protection.

How does that thinking affect Etherisc?

Insurance is an incredibly large market, decentralization has benefits for that market, and I think that token economics can be designed to be very useful to help corral network effects and to help grow a decentralized insurance protocol.

So, when I think about where Etherisc might go, not just in the use case of its initial Flight Delay insurance and protocol, but also how the ideas and techniques behind creating decentralized protocols for insurance can be sliced into a number of different business cases all kinds of things. We can make smart contracts narrowly specific to cover many business cases.

What are your thoughts on Etherisc’s upcoming Decentralized Insurance Protocol Token Generating Event?

Things have changed over the past six to eight months with initial coin offerings and token generating events. There are now stronger regulatory and compliance requirements in every country. Those who don’t want to comply will be considered rogues. This a good thing for Etherisc.

“A stronger compliance environment allows us to take a deliberative approach that brings great reassurance to investors and regulators.”

Want details? Watch the video!