"Currently, the industry is extremely underserved," Rubenfeld told CNBC. "But what Anchor Watch is doing is specifically insuring the asset itself. So we built a proprietary custody solution. And when customers use us for custody services, Lloyd's of London backed insurance is included in those services."
The demand is growing. So is the pressure to build — and secure — the technical infrastructure that makes bitcoin work.
Mike Schmidt, executive director of Brink, which funds open-source bitcoin developers through a nonprofit structure, emphasized the importance of supporting the engineers maintaining bitcoin's underlying infrastructure. "Bitcoin needs engineers," he said.