KR1 August Update 📍

KR1 plc
4 min readSep 12, 2018

A Crypto Winter in the Middle of Summer… once again… we remember you 2014/15!

August was a quiet month in crypto, but the downturn is when the real work is happening and this is when the people, who believe and support the decentralised thesis keep the movement going once the hype has died down. Alongside talking at conferences and meeting the teams we support we like to meet for tea and discuss how we can support the many amazing new disruptive projects we see.

George, Janos and Keld

Devcon IV

Prague we’re coming! Wave 2 for tickets sold out in 3 minutes, felt like ICOs in the old days. We are heading out to Prague to continue discussions around projects we are supporting and new opportunities.

Beep! Beep! Me find Llama

Gibraltar Trip

George was on a two man panel with Stuart Harrison at the Startup Grind Gibraltar at the World Trade Center Gibraltar on August 30th talking about tokens and decentralisation and tips on how to break into the blockchain industry.

George McDonaugh and Stuart Harrison interviewed by Denise Matthews

Plus we are meeting new opportunities in Gibraltar, more to come with this.

Gibraltar by night: Janos, Space Invader, Keld, and George

Investments

We’ve finally been able to announce what we’ve been up to investment-wise. Check out our NEX announcement here.

FOAM

When we looked at FOAM and supported them in their seed round last year we were blown away and came away with one question about the project, how much of the GPS market can FOAM take if not replace the whole system with a trustless design? After all its superior as a two way, not just one way, proof of location verification service while being decentralised and therefore trusted.

With that in mind, KR1 is pleased to announce that we’ve followed our initial investment in FOAM’s recent sale and we’ll be participating in the mainnet system. FOAM takes a very special place in our portfolio as it’s our first ‘follow-on’ investment now that we decided to extend our stake in their recent public round. What the team has been delivering over the past year has been impeccable!

Foam beacon simulation around New York

Althea Mesh

Althea Mesh is complementary to Foam and Cosmos, two of our favourite projects, the Interchain Foundation (Cosmos) helped seed fund Althea and we were introduced to Jehan and the rest of the team through Ryan from FOAM.

Althea Mesh is a system of software that will let communities set up decentralised internet service providers. Users purchase internet service and equipment and owners are automatically compensated for their contributions to the network. Each Althea Mesh node is constantly looking for the cheapest and best source of cryptographically verified bandwidth which will create a competitive, decentralised marketplace instead of a single provider.

Operators of the networking equipment in an Althea Mesh network can never see a user’s browsing history, or discriminate between types of content, a critically important element to keeping the internet neutral. Althea Mesh uses cryptographic tokens to incentivise the creation and upkeep of the network.

“Working with KR1 has been a smooth process. They are thesis-driven and decisive. We are proud to be in their portfolio, among innovative companies such as FOAM, Funfair, and Cosmos.” - Jehan Tremback, CEO Althea Mesh

Etherisc

We’re also happy to support Etherisc, the decentralized insurance protocol to collectively build insurance product. Alongside other insurance projects we have supported, like iXLedger or Nexus Mutual, Etherisc are one of the leading projects investigating how blockchain can be applied to disrupt the insurance market. They will create a decentralized insurance protocol to allow communities to collectively build insurance products and currently have many projects working on the protocol.

There are a range of use cases including decentralized risk pools, insurance for token economies and the already well known use case of parametric insurance, as seen with their flight delay application where smart contracts issue payouts if flights are delayed. Currently they have a number of insurance products under development including crop insurance, insurance for crypto backed loans and social insurance for health.

KR1 in the Media

Keld got a nice quote in Techcrunch about Dfinity’s mega round that just closed and had us among the participants.

a16z’s Chris Dixon and Keld about Dfinitiy’s Internet Computer

See you in September! We’ll for sure be around ETH Berlin during Berlin Blockchain Week.

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KR1 plc

KR1 plc is Europe's leading publicly listed investment company focused on blockchain and decentralised technologies (KR1:AQSE). KR1 was founded in March 2016.