anda great entryway for a budding insurance startup to get customers

There's already Velosurance. It's a good service if you've got a nice bike you're looking to cover.i But it's a heck of a lot cheaper to use a cheap bike as your townie, though, and accept that you might have to replace it every few years.

And it's amazing how strong a theft deterrent crap like stickers can be - it takes 5 seconds with a dremel for a bike thief to grind the serial numbers off a frame so it can't be traced, but the time it takes to scrub stickers off a frame to get it in resellable condition, divided by a cheap frame's resale value, easily works out to an even lower wage than driving for Uber.

Anecdotally, I make my bike up to look like bits are held on with duct tape (they aren't), and in 25 years I've never had a bike stolen. My theory is that thieves aren't looking close enough to figure out that it isn't actually a hoopty bike.