But it is also attracting bona fide businesses and has raised the equivalent of $US1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) in capital to date this year. A blockchain advertising business called Basic Attention Token raised $US36 million in 30 seconds earlier this year, and last week a blockchain data storage network called Filecoin raised an estimated $US200 million in an hour.

What in the world?

"When I started I was like, 'what in the world is going on?'," Ms Green told The Australian Financial Review. "So I looked in more detail. There are bona fide companies that are doing this, with a real jurisdiction."

PowerLedger sought advice from law firm Allens – who advised that PowerLedger's virtual tokens did not constitute a "security" in Australia – before deciding to go ahead with Australia's first ICO.

The funds will be used to expand and broaden PowerLedger's services into India and other emerging markets which are leapfrogging traditional hub and spoke energy grids and going straight to distributed wind and solar energy.

ThePowerLedger's Ecosystem is realized by a number of technology layers PowerLedger initial coin offering white paper

The ICO will be geoblocked from the US because the US Securities Exchange Commission has ruled that ICO tokens might be a currency and require a costly prospectus.

"ICOs from bona fide companies are raising between $5 million and $100 million," Ms Green told The Australian Financial Review.


Blockchain is the technology underpinning virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have grown to be worth more than $US120 billion ($150 billion) in the space of a few years.

Cut out middleman

Blockchain technology allows transactions to be recorded and settled in a "frictionless" secure distributed ledger hosted on trusted, verified computers by accredited participants, without having to pay intermediaries.

Jemma Green at a blockchain conference at Richard Branson's Necker Island retreat in the Caribbean last month. Supplied

Financial services companies such as major banks such and Australian Securities Exchange are experimenting with using blockchain as a platform for transaction and settlement of securities and other transactions.

PowerLedger is using blockchain as a platform to allow households, businesses, schools and other community organisations to buy and sell surplus "behind the meter" energy generated by rooftop solar panels, and stored in batteries or electric vehicle chargers.

In the future it hopes to use the platform to allow tenants in apartment blocks and office buildings or industrial parks to jointly own and use "behind the meter" energy assets, create incentives to boost solar power and batteries, and facilitate electric vehicle charging and carbon trading.

Previously tenants have faced the obstacle that they don't own the rooftops or other common sites where solar panels and batteries can be mounted, and solar penetration of tenanted dwellings and buildings is miniscule compared with the world-leading rate of about one in four freestanding dwellings.


The retail model for working with existing market structures (left), and the direct peer-to-peer model for working within deregulated market structures. PowerLedger initial coin offering white paper

Solar for tenants

PowerLedger hopes to boost this by making it easier for tenants to share in the ownership of solar panels and batteries and allocate the electricity they generate according to supply and demand.

Power utilities, retailers and other investors will participate in PowerLedger's ICO by applying for POWRs via the internet. In order to attract more conventional investors, PowerLedger is also making POWRs available via Sydney stockbroker Empire Securities.

PowerLedger will offer a portion of the issue at a fixed price, and then allow demand to set the price for the rest of the issue – akin to a bookbuild for a conventional securities issue. It hopes to issue between 300 million and 350 million POWRS.

Because POWRs tokens are not legally securities, the "capital" raised will be classified as income and PowerLedger will have to pay tax on it, Ms Green said.

Primary students at Rongamai Primary School, Auckland, which has been provided with a Tesla battery by Vector and is participating in the PowerLedger energy trading trial. Supplied

PowerLedger energy trading platform is operating in schools and community organisations in Auckland, and in a retirement village in Busselton and affordable housing development in Fremantle, Western Australia.

The company expects to announce another deployment in Launceston to trade energy generated by a 1 megawatt commercial solar rooftop system.