There are a number of differences between the two projects. I'll list a few, however, you will have to spend a lot of time researching on your own to ensure you know everything there is to know.

If you have specific questions with regards to Counterparty specifically, I can very likely answer all of those for you.

- Counterparty has a working product, Ethereum does not. Here is a chart that shows some of Counterparty's functionality. If Ethereum was on there, they would have nothing.

- Counterparty did not raise funds. Everything that Counterparty has accomplished has been through donations of the founders and community. This is cool from an ideological standpoint and also avoids the "did you have an illegal IPO?" question when the laws catch up with the technology.

- Ethereum has five founders (after one left the project) and 30+ employees who will not be paid for the first time with the money that is being raised. The only way Counterparty founders can be paid or make money is to make the platform a success and have the price of XCP rise. There is not a safety net for XCP founders, they are exactly equal to every single investor in XCP.

- XCP is slightly deflationary and Ether has 255 annual inflation.

- XCP cannot be mined, Ether can.

- Counterparty resides on the bitcoin blockchain, the most secure option available when it comes to blockchain technology. Ethereum is building something (that does not exist yet) on a blockchain that also has to be created and secured and tested and so on. That's going to take forever.

- Seems likely Counterparty is going to have the first offering of a cryptoequity that has some weight behind it via Overstock. Article.

EDIT: XCP did not really lose 70% of its value. After the burn period was over, the only way to get XCP was from people who had burned bitcoins. That meant there was a period of time where people needed to find the price. At the beginning though, there was no real market as there is now.

EDIT2:: Yes, the main goal of the two projects is similar, but there are some key differences. Counterparty will have probably 80% of the functionalities of Ethereum because Ethereum will be turing complete. For complex derivatives and stuff people will write scripts to create them. For the more everyday stuff, which still has multitrillion dollar market caps, Counterparty will do nicely.

Bitshares and Ethereum may team up in some way: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6990.0;all

More like: Vitalik from Ethereum visits all the crypto 2.0 projects, so he stopped and hung out with BitShares. The Bitshares guy wants Ethereum to adopt DPOS and wants to get the "mining" allocation given to Bitshares.

It's never going to happen. http://insightsintoamodernworld.blog...borations.html

I agree it's super unlikely.

Vitalik's first post in the thread is interesting as well I thought.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?...93296#msg93296

vitalik also talked with arthur britto of ripple labs. and who knows, he could be talking with jed mccaleb too.

ah yeah just read vitalik butern's post: "I think Ripple is doing great work on setting up bridges between crypto and fiat and Codius is interesting technology and could be quite nicely integrated into ethereum."

bitsharesX looks like it's going for 3rd place passing nxt and ripple if its current momentum holds.



http://coinmarketcap.com

All this will be mocked 10 years from now.

when i look at that chart, it makes me want to put every dime i have into ethereum. Litecoin has no raison d'etre anymore. the rest are either unconvincing crypto 2.0s or scamcoins.

Yeah, imo some of the coins really should not be on that list. Like Ltecoin which really doesn't offer anything except "if Bitcoin fails before some other better altcoin has taken off, Litecoin might become a replacement". But the other altcoins have almost overtaken litecoin, so imo Litecoin is dead. Darkcoin I can see still existing in the future, it's a convenient Bitcoin alternative for the black market.

Imo it's really good to see Vitalik talking to the other 2.0-altcoins. Maybe the winning 2.0 will have to do many other things than just being turing-complete like very good scalability, fast confirmations and lightweight proof of something. Which I guess is one of the bigger risks with investing in Ethereum, that it will be replaced by Ethereum2.0.

^ that.. or a lot of people become really rich creating a new 'industry'.

Pretty much what every dedicated member of every altcoin community thinks about their own coin.

that's silly. this is something really new. we really do not know which project will come out on top yet.

also about this whole crypto-craze, i feel is something that will be like the poker online pokerz in the early 2000's. you will make some money if you read up and learn about trading and you need to manage your br well enough.

I don't see how what you said contradicts what I said.

There are also people who follow all the promising altcoins to some degree and likes to pick up value.

The difference is that my comment was against my own interest. Right now promoting Ethereum is against my interest because I already bought in the pre-sale and don't want more people to buy while the pre-sale is still open. Everyone promoting their own altcoin is directly promoting their own interest.

Not necessarily. The more people who buy, the better the distribution, and the better the network effect. If more people buy in, it might mean you get less ether but each ether might be worth more, and the longterm potential of ether could be greater.

Anyway, I'm not talking about people who promote their coin just because it will raise the value of their investment. Many people will promote a coin simply because they believe it is the best one out there and want others to share in the advantages it brings.

BitsharesX Rockets to Number 3 in Bitcoin Marketcap
by: Jan Johansen

In just 24 hours, BitsharesX ripped past Ripple moving from #4 to #3 according to coinmarketcap.com. But who is this upstart to the crypto-currency market?



BitsharesX is essentially the world’s first virtual vault where you alone have the key.

You can buy, sell and trade any kind of virtual asset such as gold, silver or even company stock.

Instantly (well, within 10 seconds), right from your account, with anyone in the world.

Wow!

Sounds too good to be true.

BitsharesX is not a knock-off crytocurrency mill, but a Distributed Autonomous Company (DAC) for Bitshares in which the goal is to maximize the equity.

BitsharesX is the brain-child of Daniel Larimer, a software engineer and entrepreneur with an abiding passing for fostering radically decentralized businesses – including his own.

“I want to do business on a handshake and make reputation primary, because if your reputation is damaged it’s the worst thing that can happen and your business suffers”, says Larimer.

He continues, “It’s about the Golden Rule with a slight twist: ‘Don’t do unto others as you don’t want them to do unto you.”

According to marketing director Brian Page, “anyone can use the BitShares software to build a DAC.”

“Within that, there are many kinds of shares and many kinds of companies. The commonality is that they’re all digital and exist only as software”, says Page.

Why the sudden rise in capitalization?

Looks like it was mainly due to the increased volume in the BTC/PTS pair.

Can BitsharesX overtake Litecoin?

Only time will tell but my bet is on BitsharesX!

source: http://newswire.net/newsroom/pr/0008...marketcap.html

interesting things happening at viacoin. they forked counterparty and counterwallet, and are called clearinghouse and clearwallet. the project serves as a decentralized currency and asset exchange which relies on the viacoin blockchain.

peter todd, a former bitcoin developer, serves as chief scientist of the project.

videos and demos of the protocol and clearwallet can be seen here: http://blog.viacoin.org

I've never looked at Bitshares that closely. Can anyone comment on this blog entry?

http://prestonbyrne.com/2014/08/17/dont-walk-away-run/

Dogeparty is another interesting fork of Counterparty.

Good write up on some Counterparty information.

Something interesting that is happening is called the Supernet: http://thesupernet.org/

It's about unifying the features of altcoins with good technology. What it will mean is that you'll be able to access features from various coins from within a single wallet. So from within a supernet coin wallet, you'll be able to access the Nxt decentralized exchange, the BitcoinDark teleport, and the Boolberry cryptonote features.

The supernet itself is an offblock chain network which combines nodes from the unified supernet coins.

There will be an IPO in which you can buy shares in a supernet asset. The supernet asset will be like a mutual fund and will hold coins, so it doesn't lose value. It will gradually convert the BTC it'll receive into coins that are part of the supernet core, and as all supernet coins will be vetted for good technology and having all the coins combined and their technology usable by each other (increasing network effect), the value of the supernet coins should increase faster than most investments. Plus, supernet asset will receive some percentage of fees that come from using the altcoin technology across the supernet.

The man behind it, jl777, is trustworthy (proved himself in various ways), and an extremely talented coder and trader.

This IPO should be the biggest altcoin IPO other than ethereum. The supernetwork idea has great potential to improve the altcoin scene immensely by getting coins to work together instead of fighting each other.

Could be good for bitcoin too. Could have a bitcoin wallet with supernet functionality which will mean that bitcoin users will be able to get 2.0 and anonymous functionality from within their wallets.

I share his feelings. The whole premise is that bitUSD will match the USdollar just because traders expect it to match the USdollar, and trading away from that expectation will lose traders money.

However, all it takes is for people to start losing faith in it (maybe some big whales will back the short) and suddenly there's nothing backing up the tracking. So who's going to use the bitUSD as the stable dollar-following currency it claims to be when it's backed up so lightly. And all it takes is one shock to the system, then will anyone trust it again.

But who knows, if bitsharesX becomes a multibillion dollar sharecap and bitUSD becomes used by hundreds of thousands of people, then perhaps then the peg will actually become relatively secure.

There is no deletion mechanism. 10,000,000 were issued in the IPO and 610 BTC or about $300,000 was collected in 6 days. Via mining a total of 92,000,000 will be issued. There is no equity or capital behind the coin.

Bitshares with have 2 million, with 1% inflation after 2 years. There is no deletion mechanism. If you use the coin less than others you might get a dividend? DAC? No Thanks.