Counterparty is a platform for user-created assets on Bitcoin. It’s a protocol, set of specifications, and an API. Taken together, it allows users to create and trade assets on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain. In this way, Counterparty is similar to platforms like Waves or Ethereum. Of course, the difference is Counterparty integrates directly with Bitcoin. Therefore, it comes will all the security and reliability (and issues) that are part of the Bitcoin blockchain. This is a fairly old project. In fact, it pre-dates Ethereum with its launch in 2014. It was the original asset creation mechanism. As you’re probably aware, Counterparty has faded from prominence over the years. This is largely due to the rise of the ERC-20 token standard on Ethereum. While we’ve become used to calling blockchain assets, tokens, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. An asset can represent anything that has value or is rare. As a result, Counterparty steers clear of the word “token” in their marketing and documentation. They’re much more interested in digital assets of all kinds, not just currencies, securities, and utility tokens. Digital assets can be a digital marker of a physical object, an easy way to manage shares in your company, or reputation karma for a website. These are all types of assets you could create on Counterparty (or Ethereum or Waves, for that matter). Counterparty creates the set of rules, requirements, integrations, etc that are necessary for assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. It’s the infrastructure behind user-created assets in much the same way that the ERC-20 protocol sets up guidelines and standards for asset creation on Ethereum. One useful function of digital assets is as a marker of ownership or voting rights. Imagine a scenario where you issued a digital asset to each of your company’s board members in proportion to the amount of voting power held. Or if you gave your stockholders a digital asset as a marker of the amount of stock they owned. If you issued your stock asset, you could then use Counterparty’s distribution function to pay out dividends in BTC based on the amount of digital stock asset each person owned. Counterparty addresses many of the same issues as Ethereum or Waves, but on the Bitcoin blockchain. While that does come with some advantages, ultimately it is not as strong a platform for development as its competitors. It’s best suited for applications that need to interface with Bitcoin or assets that have a specific connection to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
TenX is a payment platform that facilitates digital and physical modes of transaction for cryptocurrencies to any merchant, even if they don’t accept cryptocurrencies. Physical and digital modes of course, include bank accounts, wallets, debit cards, cash and much more. The primary agenda of the company is to make it easier and faster to use cryptocurrency and accelerate adoption for the industry. The TenX blockchain supports the PAY token, which is the fuel that runs the network and is the cryptocurrency using which transactions on the network are made. TenX came into existence in 2011 and was created by Toby Hoenisch. While at the university, he took a keen interest in cryptography though he believed that there was no success for cryptocurrencies.In 2012, Toby started trading Bitcoin when he got to know a member of bitcoin-community who was not able to open an account in bank and used TenX crypto currency instead. Toby Hoenisch and Michael Sperk started a one-bit start up in 2015 and introduced us to a debit card, through which payments with bitcoin could be done. Cryptocurrency adoption is a longstanding problem - with most cryptocurrencies remaining relegated to the realms of hype and not seeing real-world usage, not as much as the enthusiasts would like, at least. This is an important problem being solved by the TenX coin, which seeks to make it easy for the end user to use cryptocurrencies by removing the hurdles associated with keeping different wallets and using them separately. As with all other investments, it is wise to do your own research, but seeing that TenX seems to be solving unique problems, it may certainly be worth a look.