Counterparty Asset Management

Let's talk about how Counterparty handles asset ownership

ASSETS

One of the leaky but useful analogies for Counterparty assets is that they're like domain names. I've bought and sold domain names for over 20 years—it's how I first made money online.

What makes domain names powerful are their robust management tools. You can update DNS, transfer ownership, issue subdomains. Counterparty asset owners have similarly powerful tools at their disposal: they can increase supply, decrease supply, cap supply, update descriptions, transfer ownership, issue subassets, start fairmints, issue dividends, and more. But unlike domain names, this ownership never expires.

I've always thought that was Counterparty's superpower.

The Fixed Supply Philosophy vs. Flexibility

Most recent Bitcoin metaprotocols—and I'm not an expert on all of them—take a different view on asset management. For most, the first transaction is the last transaction with respect to management. Some transaction defines the name, supply, and minting timeframe, but beyond that it's a fixed decision frozen in time.

But how you want to use an asset changes over time. That flexibility has allowed Counterparty users—some of the earliest pioneers of cryptoart on Bitcoin—to experiment and push limits. From plain-text descriptions to JSON URLs, from literal file content as descriptions to ordinal pointers and now inscriptions.

Even fairminting offers an incredible array of optionality that lets creators be inventive with the tools available. I've written a whole article on fairminting previously.

The Unique Namespace

The Counterparty namespace is different than other protocols. Names are globally unique—no contract address required. You can issue subassets in a parent-child hierarchy that makes discovery and trust easier. And they are reasonably recognizable.

My big complaints have only been two things:

  1. You can't issue L, LL, or LLL asset names. The shortest asset name you can issue is LLLL, yet most tickers people use are three letters. I've proposed changing this.

  2. Asset names aren't tradeable in a trustless way. If they were tradeable like memecoins or NFTs, there would be more liquidity. Something I proposed back in 2017.

There's been no real motion on either, but that's not unusual in an open source project, especially one built on Bitcoin. But it helps explain what I've been working on recently.

The Asset Name Market

There is niche investor interest in asset names. The first asset registered (besides the native XCP) was TEST. It sat dormant for years, and when it finally became available for sale, the price ran up as high as $30k—not for its art but for its name and position in history.

Someone registered GOLD and that's one I've long yearned to own personally.

There's also a black market for Rare Pepe asset ownership. Even if an asset is locked, there's caché in owning the asset itself rather than just the supply. You get something like merchandising rights where you can create subassets.

You can also update the description if it's not locked. (There's that asset management again.)

And speculatively, there's a market for early names. We saw this play out recently with Ordinals Sub 10k narrative and again with Runes Sub 100 narrative. People value early and it's hard to be earlier on Bitcoin than these.

The No Name Movement

It's not a requirement to have a named asset at all in Counterparty, a fact the STAMPS community has seized upon.

Registering a "named" asset like MYTOKEN costs 0.5 XCP while registering a "numeric" asset like A7337447728884561000 just costs the BTC tx fee.

As part of their meta-metaprotocol, one of the requirements is to use numeric assets. (I think?) Which avoids the friction and cost of needing XCP.

The trade off is unmemorable names which is generally solved by centralized directories serving human readable names. But I thought it was worth mentioning.

My 1000 Asset Names

For my part, in 2015, I registered 1000 asset names. I remember building my lists, getting the XCP, sweating that someone else would register the names I wanted before I got them. It was awesome. And I'm not alone—several large portfolios of asset names exist.

Some have said this is squatting and harmful to the protocol. I think in practice, it's been beneficial. Ownership of these asset names aligns you with Counterparty's success more than other more liquid tokens, including XCP itself.

One prolific portfolio is owned by J-Dog, who created XChain (the most popular and long-standing explorer) and CoinDaddy, with this same asset-name-as-domain-name vision.

Speaking of explorers, did you know? EtherScan was originally BlockScan, a Counterparty explorer that later pivoted to Ethereum!

Another collector is XCER, a long-time contributor and experimenter who creates physical trading cards at xcer.co.

Myself, I go through waves with Counterparty. It's been more than ten years, but I've promoted the protocol and built websites for the community for years. It's always been a pretty underground, volunteer-y community. In large part, the tokenomics of XCP don't lend themselves to big investments.

Right now, I'm riding a wave and have a lot of energy towards it because unlike most people, I have invested a lot into XCP the token and namespace.

Introducing XCPFOLIO

With all that said, I'm updating my XCPFOLIO website to not just list the names I have, but to give them all reasonable prices like 5 or 10 XCP and make them available for sale on the DEX with a click. (Here's the old site for nostalgia.)

How XCPFOLIO Works

XCPFOLIO bridges a gap in the Counterparty protocol. While you can trade tokens on the DEX, there's never been a way to trade asset ownership itself in a trustless manner.

Here's how I make it work:

  1. Browse & Select: Each asset name has a corresponding XCPFOLIO.ASSETNAME token with exactly 1 unit issued
  2. Purchase on DEX: Buy the token using XCP—our automated system monitors all purchases 24/7
  3. Receive Ownership: Within 2-3 blocks after your order confirms, ownership of the actual asset transfers to your address

Your asset comes ready to build: unlocked and flexible, zero supply issued, blank description, divisible by default (changeable to indivisible for NFTs). Complete ownership and control—forever, with no renewal fees.

While XCPFOLIO introduces a trusted element to facilitate ownership transfers, the system is designed for maximum transparency: automated monitoring runs 24/7, ownership transfers complete in 2-3 blocks, all transactions are verifiable on-chain, and pricing is clear.

Why Now?

A few things are coming together to make this possible. Subassets no longer cost XCP to issue, and Bitcoin fees are low right now, so I've issued 1000 XCPFOLIO subassets. The other change—Unspendable Labs and the founders returning—has unlocked improved APIs, making building a lot more reasonable.

These names come from my private collection, collected before Ethereum's mainnet and ENS even existed. With my domain name experience, I invested early in memorable Counterparty names. Now I'm offering them to encourage more Counterparty adoption and use—its unique naming system is a real advantage over contract addresses.

So if you haven't tinkered much with Counterparty assets, I encourage you to take a look. You can register one for as little as $2.50 at the time I'm writing this. When I originally registered my asset names, I paid $0.50. There's a lot to explore here, but I'll leave it at that.

SECURE THE NAMES! (MY BAGS)