Managing Directors' Statement (Half Year 2021)

“The first half of the year was very positive for the Company, our long-term strategic commitment to digital assets and the crypto space continues to serve us well, resulting in a significant increase of our Net Current Assets to £105,736,099 GBP. We have also recently seen a major acceleration in the adoption of decentralised technologies, ensuring a full pipeline of innovative and disruptive projects. We also made important steps in the evolution of our corporate governance, including two new appointments to the Company’s Board of Directors which bring a valuable mix of capital markets experience and digital assets expertise. As we look ahead, we are excited about the significant investment opportunities available to the Company. We remain confident that KR1’s portfolio performance and its ability to generate strong revenues from staking activities will continue to deliver consistent shareholder returns.

We were delighted by the positive start of 2021 which saw crypto markets take off lifting KR1’s underlying portfolio of high-quality projects into new highs. Most significantly, we saw material increases in Polkadot and Cosmos, two of our core holdings. We also saw Lido, a more recent investment, go from strength-to-strength as Lido’s liquid Ethereum 2.0 staking product went live and attracted vast sums of ETH without signs of stopping. As a Company, we look to allocate capital strategically and actively manage portfolio investments over time to derive the best possible returns for our shareholders. Managing the incoming pipeline of projects successfully is critical to the success of KR1 and in 2021, we continued to analyse and invest in many exciting disruptive projects, increasing the number of investments in our portfolio. The rate of innovation throughout the highs and lows of price volatility in the crypto markets has not slowed and, looking ahead, we are confident to see the pipeline of investable new projects continue to grow.

As a Company, we are building on the foundation of our successes since 2016, throughout long crypto winters and hype cycles, enabling us to continue on our journey of investing in and supporting world-class teams building decentralised technologies. As part of this effort, KR1 strengthened the Company’s corporate governance, by appointing Non-Executive Director Rhys Davies as Chairman. Rhys brings extensive public markets experience and corporate governance insights to KR1’s operations and has become a key member of the Board of Directors. Alongside Rhys, Mona Elisa, Founder of Enzyme Finance (previously Melon Protocol) was also appointed as a Non-Executive Director. Mona is one of the most respected voices in decentralised finance and the crypto world and we are excited to work with both of them and they will both add huge expertise to our efforts moving forward. While expanding the team, the Company has also improved internal structures and processes in line with the rate of change KR1 has seen over the last year.

Some of the highlights for KR1 in the first half of 2021 were Lido’s ETH 2.0 liquid staking product going live, the Internet Computer (formerly Dfinity) mainnet launch and the kick-off of the Kusama crowdloan campaigns and parachain auctions. These Kusama auctions allow projects to secure a parachain slot on the Kusama network but are also a precursor to Kusama’s ‘bigger’ sister chain Polkadot, which could see crowdloan and parachain auctions go live in the upcoming final quarter of the year. Current sentiment suggests that the parachain auction model has performed very strongly with enormous communities forming around successful crowdloan campaigns as witnessed with Karura, Shiden, Moonriver etc. All of this is a glimmer of what is to come for Polkadot later this year. 

As positive market sentiment continues, we are excited by KR1’s portfolio performance, composition and the Company’s ability to generate strong revenues from staking activities and consistent shareholder returns. All these bode well for a strong end to the year and exciting 2022.”

Excerpt taken from the half year results of KR1 plc for the six months ended 30 June 2021, published on the Company’s website and available as an announcement here.