Power Ledger Token: "Sparkz" Becomes Australia's First Power Trading Currency For The POWR ICO

If you follow political news in Australia, you'll know that power is a hot topic at the moment. Personally, and for varied reasons, I happen to personally believe that power delivery services are in a complete state of disarray down under with a poor level of customer service, inept problem resolution and pricing structures that penalize adoption of solar and deliberately obscure any information that could be used to compare plans on common metrics.

It's then perhaps little wonder that power has become the focus of an ICO in this country with AUD $34 000 000 already raised according to powerledger.io.

According to their website, Power Ledger is based on the premise that hundreds of millions of people have obtained modern energy access over the past decades through distribution networks. More people than ever before are interconnected via electricity networks. They claim that this creates an enormous appetite for innovative peer to peer "energy transaction platforms".

Community is negatively impacted by the ever increasing costs of centralized power and as I've mentioned, this is becoming very political here. To address this, Power Ledger claims to be the first blockchain based, distributed energy trading platform. The video on their website states that the technology will take power away from centralized sources and place it into the hands of individuals who together will enjoy a "co-created energy future".

This objective is achieved by providing the means for individuals to trade their excess power to whomever they choose. I'll add that conceptually I find this appealing as the solar rebates on offer here are a joke. The associated token goes by the name POWR and the Power Ledger white paper is available in an impressive number of languages including Korean, Hindi, French & Arabic.

As the Sydney Morning Herald reported this month here:

It's a test case for ICOs in the country as it's the first time a local company has carried out a coin offering.

The group, using DigitalX as an advisor, is offering 140 million POWR tokens sold through the Ethereum cryptocurrency network as its main sale.

A Power Ledger spokesman said the reason it looked to an ICO as opposed to more traditional capital raising avenues such as issuing shares is that the tokens offered are themselves consumptive under the energy trading platform.
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"The more uptake we see in the ICO then we see more engagement from the kinds of investors who would utilise the platform," the spokesman said.

Making the offering uncapped means there's greater opportunity for small-scale investors to participate in the offer, rather than have the offering taken up by larger funds or retail investors.

Utilising non-traditional fundraising measures is in line with Power Ledger's operations, company chair Jemma Green said.

"Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency underpins our business offering," she said.

DigitalX chairman Toby Hicks said while ICOs are still in its early stages in Australia, the way in which Power Ledger has approached the offering provides assurance.

"With Power Ledger's offering, the tokens derive their value from their utility within Power Ledger's network," Mr Hicks told Fairfax Media.

Of course it remains to be seen what will ultimately come of this offering but I'm personally all for the idea. Putting power in the hands of the individual is a great concept and this type of idea has the potential to seriously disrupt one of the most effective resource gouging industries at large today. Perhaps something to keep an eye on in this time of technological and financial evolution.