Union Finance
We are pleased to announce we invested $75,000 USD in the Union Finance project. Union Finance is an exciting new credit mutual built on Ethereum, which allows people and organisations to take out loans on the blockchain without the need for collateral, a credit score, or revealing personal information on a public ledger.
Jacob Shiach, Founder of Union Finance, commented:
“KR1 saw the opportunity in Union even before I did, and their early support was critical in getting this company rolling; I’m excited to build the future of credit with them.”
Ethereum’s decentralised finance ‘DeFi’ ecosystem is presently relying on heavy over-collateralisation, which makes some projects capital inefficient for most personal or business credit use cases and limits the appeal for mainstream adoption. Unions’ unsecured lending protocol opens up this emerging financial system to a much larger set of use cases, for example micro-loans, credit lines within the Internet of Things and social lending.
KR1 was joined in the Union seed round by 1kx, CoinFund and a number of prominent Ethereum DeFi angel investors.
Keld van Schreven, Managing Director and Co-Founder of KR1, commented:
“With around US$1 billion locked up in the DeFi ecosystem, it has grown considerably in the past 12 months, and we expect it to grow further. Union is exactly the type of DeFi project KR1 likes to back. It is a new, innovative platform to open up uncollateralised lending to everyone and represents a paradigm shift for DeFi. Jacob is re-imagining uncollateralised lending and Union leverages the power of Ethereum to unlock an entirely new area of the decentralised finance ecosystem.”
Polkadot Launch… Soon…
We are weeks away from one of the biggest blockchain launches in crypto. Gavin gave an update on the whole launch process at one of the many virtual conferences that have been happening in the crypto space lately. Here is a good explainer of the launch, also see Gavin below in the video.
KR1 is a major investor in Polkadot and we are super excited for the release of one of the key pieces of blockchain infrastructure!
Bitcoin Halving
The biggest event in crypto is happening again, Bitcoin’s new issuance per block is about to half. Countdown to the event can be found here.
George wrote a piece on the Bitcoin Halving that was picked up in Bloomberg. The complete version is available here on Cryptonews.
“Narratives in the world of blockchain act like the Force in Star Wars — they mysteriously move and shape the market,”
“You couldn’t be blamed for getting a little excited about what’s to come.”
The Bitcoin Halving is all over crypto news, another George feature picked up in Coindesk here.
“At the first halving in November 2012, the price went from $11 to over $1100 a coin a year later. Then after the second halving in July 2016, bitcoin went from $600 to over $20,000 by the end of 2017.”
If you can’t get enough of the Bitcoin Halving consider joining Pantera’s or Kraken’s online parties linked below.
Kraken VR Halving Party: https://blog.kraken.com/post/4784/celebrate-bitcoin-history-at-the-kraken-block-drop-vr-halving-party/
Pantera Bitcoin Halving Event
KR1 is Europe’s leading digital asset investment company supporting early-stage decentralised and open-source blockchain projects. Founded in 2016, KR1 has been a notable first investor in many key projects that will power the decentralised assets, platforms and protocols that form the emerging Web3 infrastructure.
In the spirit of the open and decentralised movement, any individual or institution can buy publicly-listed KR1 shares through the London-based AQUIS stock exchange.
Follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates.
