Bifury and Risk Cooperative, a specialized strategy, risk and insurance advisory firm, have entered into a strategic partnership to implement blockchain technology in the $60 billion insurance intermediation market.

“With Bitfury as a strategic partner, combined with our commitment to innovation and improving resilience, we are confident that we can serve as first movers in driving Blockchain’s adoption across the entire insurance value chain. This is no small feat, but with Bitfury’s strategic and operational leadership in Blockchain technology, we can be bold in our advance,” said Dante Disparte, Risk Cooperative’s founder and CEO, in a press release.

Bitfury says the partnership aims to provide insurance for natural, man-made and emerging risks which remain unfunded or underinsured because legacy systems and technologies that dominate established insurance providers hinder such underinsurance challenge.

No detail is provided regarding how exactly any of this would be achieved or how Bitfury has any role to play in it, but they describe themselves as a “full service Blockchain technology company and one of the largest private infrastructure providers in the Blockchain ecosystem.”

“The Bitfury Group develops and delivers both the software and the hardware solutions necessary for businesses, governments, organizations and individuals to securely move an asset across the Blockchain,” they say, with their website stating all of that is proprietary.

Their team page hardly lists any coders, although it does have numerous advisers, including former senior US government officials. On that point, they say:

“The Blockchain contains an immutable record of every transaction in history, which provides the ability (through big data mining and advanced data analytics) to trace nefarious uses of digital currency. The Bitfury Group plans to partner with law enforcement globally, just as it has with the U.S.-based Blockchain Alliance. The Bitfury Group’s vision is that Blockchain adoption can further accelerate as it becomes a technology for the mainstream unhindered by unlawful elements and actively supported by regulators.”

They stand out among all major bitcoin miners as the only ones to be so publicly connected to governments, especially in the bitcoin environment where they are deeply suspicious of any such relationship.

They further stand out for being the only miner to threaten prosecution for any protocol changes that replace bitcoin’s Proof of Work with another algorithm, significantly limiting freedom of choice.

It is, of course, unlikely the strategic partnership has anything to do with their service of bitcoin mining, but bitcoin miners providing proprietary “hardware solutions” to governments, banks, and insurance companies, is an interesting development.