Re, the onchain protocol connecting real-world reinsurance capital with decentralised finance, has secured a strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures, the venture arm of Coinbase, to accelerate its mission of bringing reinsurance capital onchain and opening one of the world’s largest, most traditional financial markets to a broader pool of investors.
Re said that it plans to use the proceeds to expand its underwriting capacity, grow its protocol team, and accelerate adoption of reUSD, its flagship product that is a deposit token issued by Resilience Foundation Cayman LLC and made available to non-U.S. persons in specific geographies.
Re explained that its ecosystem brings together the onchain “re” protocol at re.xyz, operated by Resilience Foundation Cayman LLC, with the regulated reinsurance business under the “Cover Re” brand at coverre.com, operated by Cover Reinsurance SPC Ltd., a Cayman Islands Class B(iii) licensed exempted segregated portfolio company.
The firm has reportedly written $500 million in premiums to date through Cover Re SPC, backing policies that cover close to a million U.S. households.
It said that it expects to add $400 million in new business this year and to reach an annual run rate of approximately $1 billion by early 2027.
RE observed, “Coinbase Ventures has concentrated much of its recent activity on teams moving established businesses and real-world assets onchain, a thesis that fits reinsurance neatly: premiums flow in, claims flow out, and a regulator watches the whole cycle.
“Re’s argument is that the hard part already exists. The underwriting earns real revenue, the policyholders are real, and the risk sits inside a regulated carrier. What the company is moving onchain is the capital behind it. Its reUSD token is live on Base, Coinbase’s own Ethereum layer-2 network, and the protocol accepts deposits in USDC.”
The firm continued, “Re’s model rests on a structural gap at the heart of one of the world’s largest markets: reinsurance still runs on remarkably little modern infrastructure.
“Settlements can take months, much of the data still moves through spreadsheets and email, and there is no exchange, no standard contract and no real-time pricing of the sort equities and bonds have had for decades. The last major structural innovation, the catastrophe bond, dates to 1997.
“Re casts the resulting inefficiency as a protection gap — the losses that should have been covered but were not because capital could not reach the risk quickly enough — a shortfall the company estimates at $1.8 trillion over the past decade.”
“Onchain, Re splits reinsurance exposure into tranches, the assets it calls reUSD and reUSDe. Only reUSD is available on Base, where USDC is accepted for deposit. That risk has traditionally been held by a closed circle of funds and reinsurers that tied up capital for years and reported on it once a quarter.
“The company’s pitch is that a holder of reUSD can see what backs the token and exit when they choose, while the underwriting and regulation behind the underlying policies do not change. The draw for capital, in Re’s telling, is yield that comes from insurance premiums rather than from leverage or token emissions — and that does not rise and fall with crypto or equity markets.”
Karn Saroya — CEO & Founder, Re, commented, “Reinsurance is one of the biggest pools of money in the world, and almost no one has been able to touch it.
“Working with Coinbase Ventures lets us open it up to far more people, with the discipline this business demands.”
