As every year in September, we published our KR1 plc interim report for the first six months of operations ending 30 June 2019. Find the complete announcement via our exchange here and have read of extracts of Georgeās CEO statement below.
KR1 plc Interim Report CEOās statement
āDuring a period of significant price fluctuations in digital asset markets, we are pleased that the first half of 2019 has seen our portfolio appreciate in value. Seeing a significant change in market character since December 2018, with Bitcoin bouncing off a low of $3,200 USD per Bitcoin and peaking at over $13,000 per Bitcoin some six months later.
Our investments have performed well during this volatile period. As ever, there is a strong correlation with Bitcoin across the crypto markets and weāve seen encouraging results from our portfolio in recent months, posting an unrealised profit of Ā£4,567,975 for the half-year.
This result was largely driven by the successful launch of the Cosmos network, one of our most successful investments to date. As announced previously this year, a part of our strategy is to āstakeā our Cosmos ATOM to produce a generous monthly staking yield, recognised in the revenue of Ā£116,788 over the three and a half months period since Cosmosā launch on 14 March 2019.
We believe Cosmos, Polkadot, Dfinity and other Proof-of-Stake blockchains are going to yield healthy cash flows to the business going forward to support operations and keeping our cash balance strong. Similar to yields in traditional financial markets, the yields from digital assets are, of course, subject to the underlying assetsā market prices. There are also encouraging numbers of new projects launching in the Polkadot and Cosmos ecosystem and we are fully focused on seeking out new investment opportunities in these areas. As such, we are getting involved with Commonwealth and Edgeware, which are building on Polkadot. We have previously made investments in Althea Mesh and the Foam Protocol, who will be placed in the wider Cosmos ecosystem.ā
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āMoving forward, we expect to see renewed growth in terms of new blockchain projects launching and widespread adoption as more and more people and institutions recognise the profound importance of blockchain-based financial, social and trustless ecosystems. At KR1 we believe that our unique portfolio and reputation in the market positions us strongly to drive investor returns in this new cycle of the market.ā
Income & Profit
Assets, Cash & NAV
KR1 Portfolio News
Investments
As announced last month, we made investments into Nym, Nexus Mutual and Alice, see the detailed announcement on the NEX Exchange website here.
Melon Protocol
The team behind the former Melonport entity and the creators of the Melon Protocol are re-launching through a new vehicle formed to continue building and promoting adoption of the Melon Protocol. The new company is called Avantgarde Finance, will have a strong presence in London and will be getting some new support to build out the Melon vision of a decentralised asset management world. Avantgarde has been awarded a grant by the āMelon Council DAOā to lead the protocol development over the next three years. The Melon Council DAO is the association that is governing the Melon Protocol, where we at KR1 and also the team behind Avantgarde represent one vote each of a total of eight highly skilled people.
A video of Mona El Isa and Jenna Zenk with the first public announcement of the new venture below at DeFi Summit London.
KR1 Out and About
DeFi Summit London
Lots of global DeFi people came to London to discuss the state of current āDecentralised Financeā earlier in September, kudos to Cambrial and Semantic for organizing and featuring great projects (many KR1 portfolio projects too like Argent, Nexus Mutual, Melon Protocol, etc.)!
Shanghai Blockchain Week
With the approaching Devcon V in Japan, we were represented in Asia to make valuable connections and get some more insight into many of the Asian markets like Korea, Japan and especially China at the fifth edition of the Wanxiang Global Blockchain Summit in Shanghai. We made good connections with particularly two funds that have quite some portfolio overlap with us and share our excitement for the Cosmos and Polkadot ecosystem. After the summit, we were represented at a Polkadot and Substrate hackathon in Hangzhou to check in on the emerging developer ecosystem around Polkadotā¦ it was three days full of non-stop coding with about 60 team presenting different prototypes and ideas built on early versions of Polkadot and Substrate to Gavin and crew.
London Tech Festival
George and Keld took the stage at a āTech for Allā panel in London, they spoke on the state of crypto and investing.
KR1 In The Media
We had some great coverage for our half-year interim results including a Cointelegraph feature as well as a Decrypt feature. See everything below.
Meet Us Atā¦
On October 8 - 11 we will be at the annual Ethereum unicorn rally, this year in Osaka, Japan.
Message us on Twitter @KR1plc if you want to meet us!
KR1 is Europeās 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 NEX stock exchange.
