Dean Zimberg

There are numerous challenges in the municipal bond market that serve as impediments to retail investing. The proposed solution uses “mini-bonds” that integrate blockchain technology, thereby democratizing the market, lowering both issuance and trading costs and increasing secondary market liquidity. Municipal bonds are known to be an attractive investment due to their tax benefits, low volatility and negligible default risk. However, excessive rents in both the primary and secondary markets of municipal bonds limit their effectiveness in capital formation and investing. To increase retail investor demand in municipal bonds, blockchain concepts can be combined with mini-bonds to create a permissioned blockchain platform that issues “muni tokens” through smart contracts. This blockchain platform would eliminate centralized clearinghouses, remove unnecessary entities from the issuance process and create a more liquid secondary market.

"LFGhacks 2019 sponsored by Citi Ventures" was an intercollegiate fintech hackathon hosted by the Lehigh FinTech Group. With over $12K in prizes, 200+ students competed over 36 hours to incubate world-changing ideas.

The greater United States population has progressively collected a higher sense of urgency to minimize the electricity generation burden on the natural environment. Electricity plants alone are key contributors to many health and environmental problems. To minimize the intensity of these negative externalities, the U.S. federal government incentivises macro-level electric generation suppliers (EGSs) and electric distribution companies (EDCs) to produce and disperse alternate, less-invasive renewable energy (RE) through an environmental certification program. Electric power transmission system operators (TSOs), the intermediate agent between EGSs and EDCs, facilitate the registration of all renewable energy certificates (RECs). RECs are tradable instruments that represent a claim to the less-harmful externalities associated with RE generation. The objective of this work is to introduce the possible utilization of blockchain technology in the REC market. Blockchain technology and its many applications have become a considerable catalyst of new ideas for the financial services sector. However, the empirical study of use-cases for blockchain, mainly in the financial services industry but also beyond, remains raw and empirical evidence is insufficient. In this study, we introduce a theoretical framework for the implementation of blockchain by electric power TSOs. Specifically, we analyze the implications of this application on PJM Environmental Information Services (PJM EIS), which is a regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates, controls and monitors a multi-state electric grid in the Northeastern United States. PJM EIS owns and operates the Generation Attribute Tracking System (GATS), which is a platform to buy and sell RECs.