If a bank is your conservative father, Thomas Shewchuck told the room, an insurance company is your really conservative grandfather. It does not want to take risk, and when it does, it wants to be within a one to two percent margin of error. Bitcoin mining, a young industry with little loss data, does not fit that model. At Mining Disrupt Miami, Shewchuck, of the Bitcoin mining insurer Bitsure, gave miners three ways to close the gap.
The session was recorded during the July 25–27, 2023 conference, when Bitcoin traded at $29,137; on October 11, 2026, it was $83,079. Shewchuck had spent about 15 years in insurance, starting as a wholesale broker in international risk markets including Bermuda and Lloyd's of London. He began buying Bitcoin in 2016, started mining with his partner in 2019, and founded Bitsure in 2021 to build insurance products for miners. His pitch was that miners can lower premiums and raise uptime by changing how they run the machines they already have.
Why traditional insurers view Bitcoin mining as opaque
The core problem, Shewchuck argued, is data. Insurers price risk from long histories, and mining is too young to have one; the sample size is very small and much of the pricing is guesswork. Many insurers also cannot estimate replacement costs, do not understand how miners make money, and conflate Bitcoin mining with crypto failures like FTX and Three Arrows.
insurance companies are essentially like your really conservative grandfather so they really don't want to take risk
Thomas Shewchuck · 2:51
Bitsure built its products with Milliman, the actuarial firm behind Tesla's auto insurance and SpaceX's satellite insurance products. After due diligence in the first half of 2022, it launched its first mining policy in June 2022. A year later, Shewchuck said, it insured about 6% of the global mining network, expected 10 to 15% within months and aimed for 18% by year end. Because the team also mines and works with a repair partner, it can see the pain points it is underwriting and pay claims fast.
The quiet cost of electrical negligence and the surge protector fix
When people think of mining risks, they often imagine a warehouse full of ASICs catching fire. Shewchuck corrected this misconception, pointing out that modern ASICs come with firmware that automatically shuts down the units if they reach dangerous temperatures, typically around 185 degrees Fahrenheit. The real fire risk, he explained, is rarely the machine itself but the electrical infrastructure surrounding it. Most fires in mining facilities are electrical in nature, stemming from third-party contractors who are not fully versed in the specific power loads required for high-density mining operations.
where we see a paino is really when there's a fire that occurs it's usually electrical in nature
Thomas Shewchuck · 5:40
The solution, Shewchuck argued, is deceptively simple: comprehensive surge protection. This does not mean plugging a single device into a power strip. It involves a multi-phase approach, starting with surge governors on the container or building level, from the transformer to the switchgear, and extending down to individual surge protectors for every miner. By mitigating the risk of electrical negligence and third-party contractor errors, miners can significantly reduce the probability of a catastrophic fire. For an insurer, this is a tangible, verifiable risk reduction that translates directly into lower premiums. It is a cheap, basic mitigation that provides greater peace of mind for the miner and a cleaner underwriting profile for the insurer.
Trading short-term hash rate for long-term uptime via rotating maintenance
The second operational shift addresses the physical wear and tear of ambient air-cooled solutions. Dust, heat, and mechanical fatigue can degrade performance and increase the risk of failure. Shewchuck suggested that taking 100% of a fleet offline for a full cleaning and repair is an inefficient use of capital, as it results in weeks of lost profit. Instead, he proposed a rotating maintenance schedule. By sending out just a small fraction of the fleet at a time, miners can keep the majority of their hash rate online while ensuring all machines receive regular attention.
every month we're going to take 10 to 15% of our Fleet and we're going to send them out
Thomas Shewchuck · 7:39
The data came from Repair Bit, Bitsure's repair partner based in Cleveland that it also uses for R&D and for claims salvage: when Bitsure pays a claim, the damaged machines come onto its balance sheet. A documented maintenance contract, Shewchuck said, counts as a better risk and lowers the premium, while the miner gets higher uptime, longer machine life and better profits.
The underclocking paradox: how running slower makes you richer
The third point in Shewchuck’s argument is perhaps the most counterintuitive, particularly in an industry obsessed with maximum hashrate. In the context of liquid immersion cooling, the prevailing wisdom is to overclock the ASICs, pushing them 40 to 80% above manufacturer specs to extract every possible terahash. Shewchuck challenged this assumption, suggesting that underclocking can be a more profitable and safer strategy. When a machine is underclocked, it operates below its maximum capacity, which reduces the energy consumed per terahash. This leads to a lower joules per terahash metric, meaning the machine is more energy-efficient.
so number one you get enhanced efficiency because the jewels per Terra has actually goes down
Thomas Shewchuck · 9:39
While the machine produces less hashrate, Shewchuck said, the margins are much better, so miners are often more profitable when they underclock, depending on make and model. The machine also lasts longer, and the power bill falls. For an insurer, lower power means lower fire risk, because dielectric fluid is flammable.
Aligning incentives: how risk reduction lowers your premium
His point was that insurance should reward good operations. Bitsure gives credits for each of the three measures, so surge protection, rotating maintenance and underclocking all show up in the premium. When he spoke, Bitcoin was at $29,137; on October 11, 2026, it was $83,079. The conversation continues at Mining Disrupt 2027, March 22 to 24 in Irving, Texas.