In Cointelegraph’s previous conversations with Coinprism founder Flavien Charlon, he has emphasized the simplicity and security of colored coins over crypto 2.0 platforms that use what he has called “middleman coins.”
On Monday, his company became the first in the crypto 2.0 space to launch a standalone mobile wallet for Android phones and tablets that allows users to exchange digital assets as freely as they could transact in bitcoins.
Coinprism’s mobile wallet is available as of October 20 in the Google Play store, and it is compatible with any Android 4 device.
Charlon’s Open Assets platform for colored coins allow users to tag a fraction of a bitcoin to represent a user-created asset; the easiest metaphor is a golfer marking his ball with a coin while others are putting.
Charlon imagines an economy slightly more sophisticated than trading golf balls, though.
“[C]ompanies such as Starbucks could issue colored coins for loyalty points, and distribute them to their customers, right into their mobile wallet as they pay for coffee,” Coinprism wrote in a release.
“People can also exchange gold, currencies, stocks or loyalty points as easily as they exchange bitcoins from their mobile wallet. Colored coins can also be used for things like voting or tipping during events or conferences.”
Coinprism’s wallet was already available in HTML5 format for mobile users, but this new Android release can now allow users to store and exchange colored coins without creating any kind of accounts or signing up anywhere. The key is automatically generated by the phone, and the application can be used immediately.
Speed and Security
It is in the realm of speedy, face-to-face transactions that Charlon figures the benefits of colored coins will become apparent, especially as new releases of the app add further features.
“End users today often don’t realize the benefits of colored coins compared to alternatives like Counterparty, but they will become more obvious as features such as frictionless mobile payments, micropayment channels and anonymous coin mixing get released,” Charlon said in a release. “The architecture Counterparty and Mastercoin are using is incompatible with those types of features.”
The question of colored coins or assets on the Bitcoin blockchain versus alternatives such as Counterparty and Mastercoin has picked up some momentum in recent weeks.
Andrew Barisser from Assembly Coins implored Reddit at the end of September to build its own currency, which is only in the hypothetical stage at the moment, on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.
“Colored Coins enable a host of new capabilities for owners, such as cryptographic voting, to multisignature addresses for mass organizations,” he wrote on Medium.com. He explained:
“Representing ownership as a token is only the first step. Reddit can gain from these innovations. Perhaps users can hold Reddit Shares and write cryptographically signed ‘Reddit Platinum’ messages with them. Maybe subreddits hold money collectively on multisig addresses. Who knows? The possibilities are endless. But let’s start with a sound foundation.”
Charlon echoed that “solid foundation” theme in the press release for the Coinprism Android wallet:
“Open Assets, [in contrast to the alternative crypto 2.0 platforms], takes a more open approach, more similar to how the modern web works where standards are first defined by the W3C, and then implemented by browser vendors. The Open Assets protocol has been fully defined and finalized, and various companies like Coinprism and Assembly.com can now independently implement it, while still retaining the guarantee of interoperability.”
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