Its a terrible format for investors, can't see any information on assets other than last bid / sell price (No orderbook!). Currently its worse than BitcoinBourse. And thats saying a lot. Has great potential, but I won't be using it the way it looks. How are you supposed to be able to do due diligence with 0 information!
How are you supposed to do due diligence with bitcoin with 0 information?
you can give your 0.5btc to some guy named TradeFortress who tells you he'll keep it very safe in his online vault but might regret it later
Making an exchange decentralised doesn't eradicate the need for taking care with picking assets. You can't rely on the protocol for that.
Issuer can fill a description of their asset: IE
http://www.blockscan.com/assetInfo.aspx?q=MPTSTOCKor they can stick in enhanced description and link to that. Investors need to decide whether they trust the issuer, just like you need to decide whether you trust whoever you send BTC too because you can't call up Bitcoin customer services and request a chargeback.
From counterparty, BTC (or whatever other unit) get's sent between investors and issuers without 3rd party stepping in- it's like glorified direct shares on distributed excel ledger.
In some cases tx are escrowed by protocol, in other cases it's direct. It's not controlled by a third party though so you don't have to 'request withdrawals'. millions of dollars stolen by gox and it took till 2014 until they closed down, millions of dollars stolen by cryptostocks, and yet they are still active. Most of these frauds came from trusting third party to amass large amounts of bitcoin in wallets that they control private keys too. That was never the way bitcoin was supposed to be. In counterparty your keys are under your possession.
If one counterwallet node was shut down, you wouldn't have to worry. Therefore the problems we've seen with GLBSE, BTCT.CO, Bitfunder etc aren't applicable.
As of yet a WoT hasn't been integrated, butyou can import an existing key with established history to prove trust if you were thinking of listing there, or leave a signed message when creating an asset. Perhaps an independent ratings agency may come up up in the future.
Orderbooks are visible both via external sites and on the main counterwallet site itself. Every order is transparent.
Technologies to build upon this process like Vennd (which can act as Gateway, vending machine,bidirectional router- issuing stock for BTC automatically) will make XCP increasingly attractive, comparing it to bitcoinbourse is not right
