Charlie Stevens: Tontines and the Restoration of Retirement Income
About this episode
Charlie Stevens discusses the intersection of actuarial thinking, Bitcoin, and retirement income solutions like tontines.
In this episode, I sat down with Charlie Stevens to explore what happens when actuarial thinking collides with Bitcoin, hard money, and the future of retirement income. We started with Charlie’s path through the actuarial profession in Ireland and into insurance consulting, then unpacked how reserve assumptions, capital rules, discount rates, and regulatory incentives shape the insurance world far more than most people realize. We also looked back at the evolution from defined benefit pensions to variable annuities, why so many lifetime income products became less viable as rates fell, and how the financial system increasingly drifted toward model-driven abstractions instead of economic reality. From there, we got into the core question: what might lifetime income look like in a harder-money world? That led us to tontines — an old idea with a modern structure — and why Charlie believes they may be one of the most promising ways to solve longevity risk without relying on the fragile guarantees of the fiat era. We discussed how Tontine Trust works, why the incentives are so compelling, how Bitcoin and gold fit into the picture, and why this could become a major building block for…
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