About Counterparty Counterparty is an innovative platform for peer-to-peer markets and financial instruments. Unlike Wall Street and other centralized financial institutions, Counterparty provides open, secure financial tools and markets that do not require a trusted third party or middleman to use. The first of its kind, Counterparty aims to decentralize and democratize finance in the same way the Internet itself has done with creation and sharing of information. The platform is built on top of Bitcoin, and extends the functionality of the Bitcoin network in new and unprecedented ways. With Counterparty, anyone with an Internet connection gains access to financial instruments that were previously cost prohibitive or not available at all. The primary goal of Counterparty is to enable entrepreneurs, developers, artists and more to build a new, productive economy: doing things that have never been done before, made possible by the amazing technology behind Bitcoin. We want to unlock the potential of “Bitcoin 2.0″ for thousands of people, who will then create profitable businesses, as well use the technology to further the social good. Read more about how to get started on building with Counterparty technology. XCP: Representing the value of the Counterparty platform To make possible many of its features, Counterparty required its own native currency. This currency, called XCP, was created by destroying (or “burning”) around 2,100 bitcoins in January 2014. This was done by members of the bitcointalk community sending them to an address where they could no longer be used. From this destruction of about $1.6 million dollars of bitcoin-denominated wealth at the time, 2.6 million XCP were created by the system and sent to those who burnt. This is the total population of XCP that will ever exist, and XCP can now be acquired on the open market. Read more about how this burn process lead to one of the fairest-ever coin launches, as well as how XCP is used, and where XCP may be purchased. The story behind Counterparty Counterparty’s origins were among the most fair and transparent ever, carried out in the spirit of highly successful platform projects such as Linux and Bitcoin. Read more on the story of Counterparty, and the motivations of the founders. Want to get started right away? Try out our free web-wallet, Counterwallet. Counterparty’s Features Digital token creation Create digital tokens (similar to stock ticker symbols) in the Counterparty marketplace, representing your organization, product, or anything else. Conduct crowdfunding via selling your tokens for Bitcoin or XCP, using our digital “vending machine” technology. Issue dividends to those who have invested in your token, awarding them from earned profits or more. “Proxy tokens” can also be created and linked to real world assets such as commodities and foreign currencies. This can allow markets between a coin like SWARM and US Dollars, for instance. Peer-to-peer financial market Trade tokens with anyone else quickly and cheaply. You do not even need to know or trust the person with whom you are trading, as the system itself takes the role of the middleman, being totally trustworthy and having no need to profit off your trades. Advanced financial instruments Counterparty boasts financial instruments such as binary options and contracts for difference (similar to options), that are fully collateralized and work without requiring you to know or trust the other party. Support for additional instruments such as options, swaps and futures are on the horizon. Counterparty’s Benefits User-Friendly With Counterwallet you can start using the Counterparty platform immediately. We also have numerous videos and tutorials that others can use to pick up the specifics. Open As a community-driven, open-source project, we’re building a grassroots movement to free up the world’s markets from centralized control. With Counterparty, you can take part in a global financial marketplace, where bonds and commodities are traded with no exchange fees, risk is hedged without paying a broker, and crowdfunding is done without kickbacks to third-parties. Safe Counterparty has a built-in escrow service that holds your funds until your transactions are complete, entirely eliminating the need for a trusted third-party. There is no bank account that can be seized and no company server that can be hacked. Counterparty keeps an indisputable record of ownership embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain, which is stored safely on thousands of computers all over the world. Secure All of the source code underlying Counterparty is publicly available, and has been audited and has been audited by several top-tier security experts. The development team operates a generous bug bounty program to incentivize others to review and help harden the code. Why is Counterparty needed? Modern finance is based around the concept of a trusted third-party middleman, who brokers deals on behalf of two or more parties. This worked well in days past, where such arrangements were simpler and financial technology less developed. However, in today’s age of financialization, globalization, and excess centralization of power, these frameworks are beginning to break down. The crisis of 2008 was a warning call to the world about the dangers surrounding the excess concentration of power, privilege and money to too few. Still, very little has been done as a response: Complex financial derivatives continue to be created and rehypotheticated, further entangling the system in a web of excess leverage and trust requirements. Egregious practices such as market scalping, naked short selling, and blatant manipulation of market rates such as Libor and the Gold fix continue to take place in one form or another. And, countries the world over engage in extensive quantitative easing (“money printing”) policies meant largely to plug the gap created from years of debt-based phantom growth and the destruction wrought by harmful financial products and practices. This would be one thing if it only affected those who chose to take the risks and commit these actions. However this is not the case. We are all pulled into these games, as witnessed via the shrinking size and health of the middle class in many countries, the growing sting of inflation surrounding numerous consumer prices, and the stark rise in enrollment for government assistance programs as the gap between rich and poor continues to rise. This crisis demands action, yet our politicians and mainstream finance industry seem either incapable or unwilling to to anything, and more often than not are just making what is quickly becoming an intractable situation even worse. As the world evolves and becomes more interconnected, the structures and systems we use at the heart of finance and governance must also evolve. Technology itself has arguably enabled many of these issues, through magnifying the impact of human shortsightedness and greed. However, properly conceived and deployed, technology can also provide the solution. Built on the revolutionary peer-to-peer blockchain technology that powers Bitcoin, Counterparty provides — for the first time ever — decentralized financial markets and instruments, intended to help solve these issues at hand. Through the use of the Counterparty platform, the immense computer network powering the Bitcoin blockchain itself takes the role as the trusted third party in trades. Excess leverage and trust requirements are then eliminated as math and cryptography replace failable human logic and greed. Finance can continue to evolve to suit the demands of a global economy, but this time with built-in protections that prevent the system itself from being gamed by those in positions of power or influence. This is the purpose behind Counterparty, and we offer the vision of a better tomorrow, founded on the basis of truly free and fair markets. https://counterparty.co/
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 17:39:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015