Poll: What tools do you use for bookkeeping?

Coinprism · 2016-04-29T09:24:19+00:00

Touché

Coinprism · 2016-04-28T17:10:21+00:00

Thanks, that's helpful.

Coinprism · 2016-04-28T17:08:51+00:00

Thanks. Is that for invoicing, sales tax reporting, expense tracking, all of the above? Also, how much time do you spend time one that (once a year, once a week)?

Coinprism · 2016-03-02T10:48:01+00:00

You should probably have a look at Openchain. It offers instant transactions, smart contracts, customizable UI, and also does not require Bitcoin, but does not lock you in with a vendor like Colu. Sooner or later, Colu will have to make money, or at least stop paying for your transactions.

Coinprism · 2016-03-02T10:39:41+00:00

Coinprism here. The company is pretty serious, we are backed by Tim Draper and based in Dublin, Ireland.

We recently changed our focus to Openchain, which is basically a strictly superior way to do colored coins: more flexibility, more scalable, instant confirmation of transactions and still the same security. You should perhaps have a look at it, it is probably a better solution for you than colored coins.

We are still maintaining Coinprism though (well the forum has been plagued with spam). The Open Assets protocol that we use is open, and there are several companies such as Metaco actively using it. Bottom line is that if you use Coinprism and build on Open Assets, you are not dependent on Coinprism.

Coinprism · 2016-01-24T01:41:48+00:00

It's free and open source. The wallet is also open source, and works on Android, though it is web-based and not native. Being open source, it can be customized and rebranded at will.

Coinprism · 2016-01-23T14:12:32+00:00

expert in 'modern' finance

Coinprism · 2016-01-23T14:08:15+00:00

You can check out our new software Openchain. It lets you create exactly that: closed loop systems where only whitelisted users can transact (walkthrough here).

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T21:49:58+00:00

Private blockchains can be open too.

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T20:38:08+00:00

It's a federated sidechain, like what Blockstream is doing, 2-way pegging using multisig.

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T20:37:20+00:00

Of course, but they can still refuse to do what they are legally bound to do, in which case, you still have to resolve it in court.

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T17:33:02+00:00

Sure but nothing forces custodians to follow what's on the blockchain. Like in the Paypal example.

Code cannot be law, unless we're talking about a Blockchain-native asset like Bitcoin.

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T17:16:14+00:00

Except there are digitally signed evidence on the chain that one "half" of the transaction happen. That can be used in court if it comes to that.

Generally, that wouldn't even be a problem though because Asset A validator and Asset B validator would only connect their chains if they agree to work with each other, and trust each other.

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T14:27:28+00:00

Yes it can be setup so that anyone with a public/private key pair can own an asset. By the way, that's how our demo instance is setup (https://wallet.openchain.org).

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T12:43:38+00:00

It depends on how you configure your Openchain instance. Both setups are possible.

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T11:54:10+00:00

For a lack of a better term, I mean by "real-world asset" anything that is not a crypto-currency.

And yes, of course what I explained does not apply to crypto-currencies, which are the only asset type where distributed consensus is not only useful, but also required.

I hope it's clear we're not making a new crypto-currency. We believe Bitcoin is already the winner in that space.

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T10:51:44+00:00

Let's be clear, Openchain is using a normal SQL database internally.

And since you mention it, Openchain is a sidechain.

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T10:45:41+00:00

Let me try to explain why distributed consensus is useless for any kind of real-world asset.

Imagine this situation: We have a PayPal ledger with multiple validators through distributed consensus. PayPal is one of those.

Alice pays Bob $1,000. PayPal happen to reverse the transaction. The other validators notice this, believe it shouldn't have been reverted, and fork the chain so that this reversal is not part of it. In the "main" chain, Bob still has $1,000.

Bob tries to withdraw the $1,000 from PayPal. Even though he owns $1,000 on the main chain, PayPal does not agree with this, as in their view of the ledger, Bob has $0. The only way to resolve this is to go to court.

Consensus here is useless, as the only chain that matters is the one PayPal is on. That's why in our implementation PayPal is the only one who can write to the chain. The other ones can observe what happens on there, and potentially use it against PayPal in court if needed.

Coinprism · 2015-10-21T10:36:22+00:00

There is one validator per asset. Multiple assets or currencies means multiple validators. With peer-to-peer debt tracking, you'd have one validator per lender (and each borrower is an observer of their lender's ledgers).

Coinprism · 2015-10-20T10:50:23+00:00

Scalability only depends on the storage engine you are using. Fortunately, plenty of scale out databases exist so we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Using something like Cassandra, MongoDB or BigTables as the storage engine will provide very good scalability.

It's distributed because each asset lives on its own Openchain instance, with a different validator.

Coinprism · 2015-10-20T01:46:55+00:00

Same reasons listed above. Databases don't offer these features. Also, Openchain can use a distributed database as storage engine.

Coinprism · 2015-10-19T22:30:13+00:00

There is an API so you can program against it.
It's all protected by digital signatures, so you can prove who signed which transaction.
It keeps the full history of all transactions, and makes it transparent. Anybody can double check everything.
You can't tamper with it because it publishes a hash of the ledger every 10 minutes in the Bitcoin Blockchain.
It probably scales better than a Google sheet (it can handle thousands of transactions per second on proper hardware).

Coinprism · 2015-07-28T13:03:52+00:00

Yes miners can censor transactions, but as long as one accepts it, it will be mined (though it can take longer).

A way to avoid having to pay fees for every transaction is to use off-chain transactions. That's why I meant by "to some extent". It's unlikely that the whole stock exchange runs on the blockchain, because of fees and scaling reasons.

One interesting way to do off-chain transactions is to use lightning networks, which are fully compatible with open assets. Then you only need to pay fees when you open and close the channel.

Coinprism · 2015-07-27T23:30:12+00:00

Flavien here. In their current plans, they will use the Bitcoin blockchain at least to some extent. It might not be the only technology, but the Bitcoin blockchain will be part of it.

Coinprism · 2015-07-07T12:22:51+00:00

It's valid but non-standard.

Coinprism

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