Cornell computer science major George Li ’18 was part of a four-person team to win the Grand Prize at the Cornell FinTech Hackathon held at Cornell Tech on October 9. The Grand Prize team won $25,000, free incorporation and legal services, and was able to meet with venture capitalists who might be interested in financing their project.
The project is called Blockfolio and is built on blockchain technology that opens up an alternative asset for investing. “What we do is take real estate or banking loans and break them up into thousands of pieces so that everybody, not just hedge funds, can diversify their risk. By building this marketplace we are able to get banks the liquidity they need to issue more high quality loans and spur investments in local communities,” said Li.
Other members of Li’s team include William Painter, NYU Stern MBA ’15, Irvin Cardenas, Florida International University CS BS ’15, and William Burnett, San Diego High School. “From day one we came together because we held a common belief in the power of the blockchain to be revolutionary. Its current application has been in equity trading (NASDAQ) and rapid bank transfers (Citi). Costs, risks and inefficiencies are drastically reduced through the use of a distributed blockchain ledger, allowing for more efficient reporting, reconciling and auditing of information. If the New York Stock Exchange was created today, it almost certainly would have been built on blockchain technology,” said Li.
For more information on Blockfolio and its progress visit www.blockfolio.co.