InsurTech Nayms has closed a £1.5 million seed funding round.
The start-up, which will launch fully in 2021, has been backed by lead investor XBTO alongside Coinbase Ventures, Maven11 and the founders of Synthetix and Insurtech Gateway.
The latter co-founded the project with CEO Dan Roberts.
The funding will enable London-headquartered Nayms to continue launching larger pilot programs in preparation for a full launch later in 2021 following graduation from the Bermuda Monetary Authority sandbox into a full regulatory license.
The project now has runway to build its customer base and work on capital market integrations prior to its Series A, planned for Q1 2022.
Nayms uses smart contracts to collateralise cryptocurrency risk with matching crypto-assets.
The company’s first pilot programme is a digital insurance contract placed by Breach Insured for its client Coinlist.
Breach CEO Eyhab Aejaz said: “There is a well-documented shortage of re/insurance capacity available to digital asset risks and in order for Breach to scale our business to new markets and additional products, it is imperative for us to identify complementary sources of re/insurance capacity and collateral.
“Our partnership with Nayms allows Breach to cover complex digital asset risks at scale – similar to how this problem is solved for traditional catastrophic risk insurance in the P&C and Surplus Lines markets.”
Following the pilot, Nayms CTO Theodore Georgas said: “This pilot represents a small but significant milestone for Nayms as we move into 2021 with accelerating traction.
“It is our belief that the problem of scaling insurance protection for the digital asset space will be solved through a collaboration between regulated underwriters/brokers and capital markets. Nayms is building the infrastructure to facilitate this collaboration.”