Australian Startup Power Ledger’s Price Doubles During Week-long Surge
The price of POWR tokens more than doubled this week on the heels of a major announcement from Australian solar startup Power Ledger.
As CCN.com reported, Power Ledger was the first Australian blockchain startup to hold an initial coin offering (ICO). The company raised $34 million AUD during the ICO for its peer-to-peer energy marketplace.
When POWR tokens first began trading in early November, they were priced at less than six cents. Since then, the Power Ledger price has increased exponentially. By November 14, the Power Ledger price had reached $0.200, and it continued to rise from there. On Monday, the Power Ledger price peaked at $0.705, which represented a weekly gain of 253 percent, although it had declined to $0.559 by the time of writing. Power Ledger now has a market cap of $195.2 million.
Monday’s rally was accompanied by an explosion in trading volume. In the past 24 hours, POWR trading volume reached $206.9 million, which accounted for more than 2.6% of the cryptocurrency market’s total volume. This made POWR the seventh-most traded cryptocurrency for the day, ranking it above market heavyweights including litecoin and dash.
The primary driver of the price surge appears to be the recent announcement that Power Ledger will be participating in a government-funded blockchain trial. The $8 million AUD trial will test the integration of blockchain technology into distributed energy and water systems. The two-year project will use Power Ledger’s blockchain as the transactional layer for the renewable assets and will govern the ownership model for a community-owned battery.
Power Ledger is also currently participating in a blockchain trial with Origin, Australia’s largest retail energy provider. Moreover, the startup has also partnered with Indian information technology giant Tech Mahindra to establish several hundred microgrids within the country, a move intended to help the company expand its future services into emerging markets.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
