Opalcoin might just be the start Colored Coins needs to gain widespread adaption.

In their simplest forms, bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, are essentially just different forms of money. The purchasing power of these coins is determined solely by how much a purchaser is willing to pay for them, using his/her local currency. A large majority of bitcoin vendors have a dollar value next to the bitcoin price, and even those who only accept bitcoin fluctuate their prices based off of the current exchange rates.
But what if bitcoins, dogecoins, litecoins, and every other coin out there was more than just a set of numbers with an attached dollar value? Colored Coins may very well be the solution. The concept is straightforward. With Colored Coins, users can "color" their coins, giving them a label, an additional set of information. With these labels, coins can be attached to commodities, assets, stocks, and more. Beyond numbers and electricity, bitcoin and other altcoins can be backed by a real life value using Colored Coins.

Coins that have been colored effectively become tokens. These tokens can be recognized by various parties as representations of stocks, bonds, houses, and just about anything else. By exchanging these tokens, both parties can bypass the regulations, taxes, and restrictions that would normally hinder the trade of the assets they represent.

Colored Coins has launched with bitcoin recently, but has yet to receive major usage. Some altcoin developers have declined integrating the system into their currencies, but many others have considered the implementation. Most notably, Opalcoin has taken measures to apply Colored Coins to their cryptocurrency, and they plan on releasing the system shortly.

Opalcoin, launched in September of 2014, is a cryptocurrency known for its anonymity, or the "opacity" as it is commonly referred to. Anonymity is one of the core values that coin was founded upon, and unique features such as encrypted messaging and opaque addresses give users the tools to maintain their anonymity. 

Another goal the developers had early on was to implement a market place free of taxation for the coin. A commodity exchange, where users trade goods and services, rather than money, was one of the first visions for the coin. There is hope that Colored Coins may be the solution to create this system. With Colored Coins, Opalcoin users will be given the tools necessary for anonymously trading gold, bonds, stocks, and anything else via colored Opalcoins. 

Colored Coins is a revolutionary system in the cryptocurrency world. One of the major criticisms to altcoins is that they lack any real value outside of what people are willing to pay for them. Colored coins dispels this criticism by giving users the ability to bind their coins to assets. Opalcoin might just be the start Colored Coins needs to gain widespread adoption.

A currency is reborn [ by Evan Duffield ]

Darkcoin’s vision has always been to create a trust-less, decentralized, private and fast payment platform for the benefit of the majority. This is our ethos and our most important goal, recently it became apparent that our branding was getting in the way of reaching the people we were trying to help, that is when I knew that in order to accomplish our vision we would need to change our name. Our ideals remain intact and we will continue to pursue them under any branding we have, now and in the future.

Months ago the community organically came up with the name “Dash” as a possible rebranding idea of Darkcoin, I took notice of this and the good deal of support it had in the forums. This lead to us researching the Dash brand for a few months. In the process of doing some investigation, we found that there was another company in the financial space that was filing a trademark. This resulted in me buying another coin “Dashcoin” and challenging their trademark application.

There is some misunderstanding in the community about why there was a quick move to announce this without a previous debate on the forums, as I originally intended. It was simply the result of a mistake on github, where I posted a comment to the Darkcoin github account with the Dashcoin github account login. I felt it was best to show the community where I was with the research, rather than let rampant speculation move through the community about why we were in control of the Dashcoin project. Acquiring Dashcoin is no different than getting a previously existing domain name, the acquired project itself will not continue only the DRK project will move forward under a new name. I had to make some really quick decisions and I apologize for the confusion that resulted from my mistakes.

That’s all in the past now and after careful consideration, reading all the posts from everyone for the last few days and weighing every argument, I believe it is best if we make it official that we’re going with DASH. At this point our priority is to have closure so we can move on, the uncertainty hurts the community and markets, more than any renaming options and prevents us from moving forward with development.

Communication has been an issue for us, as Darkcoin has quickly grown over the last 14 months. We have grown so fast that I couldn’t keep everyone in the loop at all times. We’re addressing this by moving all development coordination to Slack, which has already had a great positive impact on the project. Part of managing something that grows this quickly is addressing weak areas that can be improved, we believe moving to a platform that the whole development team can openly communicate on is key to that goal.

I do appreciate the support of the community on this and I apologize if there was poor communication on my part, this has been an extremely difficult subject to navigate and I have tried to do my best. I know mistakes have been done, this has been a very difficult time for me. But we have new tools in place, to prevent any future communication mistakes like this.

DASH is just a name we still need to build our vision onto it and we need everyone’s support to push the project forward.

Over the next weeks we will be planning the name change and Logo Design work with the participation of the whole community, details regarding this will be revealed soon.

Block Verify, the Blockchain Based Anti­Counterfeit Solution 

London, March 9, 2015 — The Block Verify team has completed a pilot program using advanced blockchain technology to disrupt anti­counterfeit technologies worldwide. Counterfeit goods currently account for $1.77 trillion around the world. Such goods are found globally at markets, and they find their way onto the shelves of retail stores. We offer a technical solution for every party involved. We provide proof that a product is genuine by giving it a permanent record on the blockchain. 

The blockchain offers the technology needed to combat counterfeit goods on a grand scale. We use a private blockchain to monitor the whole distribution network, including trading partners and product sourcing. 

Approximately 30% of medicines in the developing world are counterfeit, according to estimates. Research shows that more than one third of all malaria medicine in Africa is counterfeit, leading to the deaths of over 500,000 people annually from the disease, which is curable when treated with proper medication. 

Pavlo Tanasyuk, B lock Verify Founder
“Bitcoin was originally used to buy illegal drugs. Now we are using the same technology—the blockchain—to help stop the distribution of dangerous counterfeit drugs worldwide.” 

Our blockchain solution removes the possibility of creating duplicate product identifications, provides trust and transparency to distribution networks, and helps the global fight against counterfeit goods. The industry deserves complete transparency for governments, 

companies, and consumers. Nearly every sector of the global economy is affected by counterfeiting. 

Records have been difficult to protect and authenticate in the past. We are now able to verify them throughout a global network. Blockchain technology provides a distributed mechanism that locks in data, making the data verifiable and independently auditable. Bitcoin’s blockchain is the most trusted immutable data store in existence. The technology is ideal for helping the fight against counterfeit goods. 

About Block Verify 

Block Verify headquarters are located in London, United Kingdom. Our goal is to stop the distribution of counterfeit goods. Please visit http://blockverify.io, where we will be adding more information soon. 

For Press Inquiries Contact: 

info@blockverify.io 

Darkcoin - The Private E-Cash-Solution 

Ladies and gentlemen, Bitcoin Rush recently published an exclusive Darkcoin episode [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzu_02-lp7o ] which includes an extensive interview with Evan Duffield, THE main developer of Darkcoin. We discussed the need for privacy - or anonymity - and why this is so important to the crypto-currency user. 

It was a real pleasure to meet Evan and have had the amazing opportunity to talk to one of the most respected entrepreneurs in the crypto space. We discussed many different topics and it became clear, Darkcoin - with all it’s associated technologies - fills important needs to offer us an instant, secure and private e-cash-solution. 

Darkcoin started as a fork of Litecoin and now it's a fork of Bitcoin. - and the idea was to bring anonymity by a process called “Coin-Mixing”. They created a secondary peer-to-peer network, from which Master-nodes were born. Master-nodes are constantly mixing coins so you can’t tell anymore where they originally come from. A peculiar advantage when it comes down to attaining anonymity. Evan emphasized that it is impossible to achieve 100% anonymity at current time, but with Master-nodes and Darksend it is getting as close to that as anyone could. Darksend is the technology that Master-nodes use to mix the coins. This process makes it irrelevant to trust humans running the system, where they would have to destroy the original crypto key to achieve the same result as Darksend. With Master-nodes and Darksend, we have a complete trust-less system, meaning that no trust is required to maintain anonymity. And by the way, privacy makes it safer from thieves. 

Another advantage of Darkcoin is its tremendous speed of transaction. All coins need miners to secure the network, but with Darkcoin’s Master-nodes, the transaction can be verified in seconds and easily committed to the blockchain. This all is successfully done by using their latest technology: InstantX. InstantX is as fast as a credit card and as private as cash. And with now over 2000 Master-nodes running, the Darkcoin network is already mature. People have invested substantial amounts of money to create their Master-nodes, which strongly shows a lot of faith and support from the community. 

Yes, Darkcoin is ready for mass adoption. It’s the perfect e-cash solution. Merchants are now welcome to accept and take advantage of a revolutionary technology. Darkcoin being as instant and private as it is, does not even need ATM’s anymore, avoiding all legalities involved using them. And best of all, merchants don't have to set up a new system. Darkcoin includes merchant services and merchant tools, easily convertible for the use of Darkcoin. Their system is compatible with everyone’s existing technology. 

Darkcoin is a tested system - providing dependable anonymity - it’s trust-less in a very good way - fast enough to compete with credit cards. Its time for some true anonymity in our crypto-coins. I belief that getting transactions to go through in seconds really is the next step to gaining worldwide acceptance and usage of e-currency - not only online - but in stores, theaters, restaurants, train stations, and, and, and…

http://darkcoin.io

http://darkcointalk.org

http://twitter@DarkcoinOrg

press@darkcoin.io