Check out
https://www.coinprism.com/You can see Overstock's bond on there too.
I checked it out quickly and this is what I think it is:
When you make an account there you can make any colored coin you want, IPO's, assets, collectibles, you can select how many shares etc. there will be.
You get an asset address (starts with an
a) that's coupled with your BTC address, your own colored coins can be distributed/sold from that address.
You don't need 100 BTC or something just a bit to pay miner's fees.
So in short you can launch an IPO or whatever you want for cents on the blockchain.
Ok, I think if I read over the white paper on that about 20 more times I might finally understand.
I think the key for me is that it is using OP_RETURN to store the hash on the blockchain (if I'm reading it right), which means that it is not using some third party or a separate blockchain which was my main concern.
I also found this site:
http://coinsecrets.org/ which dislays all of the OP_RETURN data being inserted to the blockchain.
It shows one transaction:
https://blockchain.info/tx/9805d9729e86168c55575dd1cbcdd65737123eff924f3d409c24d8b77b408793?show_adv=truewith the OP_RETURN of " jWOW, WHAT AN ASSHOLE"
wonder what that's all about...lol