The beauty of the underlying Bitcoin technology – the public ledger blockchain – is that it can be used for much more than just keeping track of monetary transactions. There are at least 80 other possible uses for the blockchain that have been proposed so far. And just as early internet developers couldn’t predict what the internet would eventually evolve into, blockchain technology will inevitably be used for concepts that are beyond our current imagination.
One of the more exciting blockchain implementations currently gaining in popularity is that of Colored Coins, which allow you store assets such as company stock on the blockchain. And today, Coinprism, the Colored Coin web wallet, announced the launch of the first colored coin blockchain explorer.
What makes this special is that it displays all the Colored Coin transactions along with providing all the other functions of a traditional Bitcoin blockchain explorer. It’s very similar in design to Blockchain.info, except Coinprism users can store, issue, send and receive Colored Coins. Users can now easily explore the world of Colored Coins and see which assets are currently available and being exchanged.
Coinprism also includes an asset directory where you can see the top Colored Coin assets. The top asset is currently Gold Colored Coins, which are ‘Rare Collectible Gold Colored Bitcoins,’ followed Vapetropolis Shares, which represent a percent ownership of the e-commerce website Vapetropolis.com.
The Colored Coins mechanism has only been around for a few months, and hasn’t really had time to infiltrate the minds of the general populace. Most are still trying to wrap their minds around the revolutionary aspects of Bitcoin as a monetary tool in itself. So there aren’t many legitimate assets associated with Colored Coins yet.
But with the release of the Coinprism blockchain explorer, and with similar projects such as Mastercoin and Counterparty in the final stages of development, the idea of storing and transferring assets with the blockchain will only increase in popularity. Decentralization is the future and this idea is already being propelled by billion dollar companies like Overstock, who just this week announced that they are interested in exploring the idea of decentralizing stocks using blockchain technology.
The following explanation published in the OpenAssets github explains how exactly Colored Coins could be used to transfer and store assets in the blockchain:
-A company could issue colored coins representing shares. The shares could then be traded frictionlessly through the Bitcoin infrastructure.
-A bank could issue colored coins backed by a cash reserve. People could withdraw and deposit money in colored coins, and trade those, or use them to pay for goods and services. The Blockchain becomes a system allowing to transact not only in Bitcoin, but in any currency.
-Locks on cars or houses could be associated with a particular type of colored coins. The door would only open when presented with a wallet containing that specific coin.
And here are about 80 more possible blockchain implementations.
