Coinprism
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Coinprism was a Dublin-based online wallet and token platform founded in 2014 by Flavien Charlon, one of the pioneers of Bitcoin-based tokenization. Built on the Open Assets protocol, it enabled users to issue, store, and trade colored coins - bitcoins tagged with metadata to represent real-world assets such as loyalty points, gold, stocks, or event tickets - alongside a block explorer and API.
02 / Coinprism FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Coinprism shut down at the end of March 2018 because the ecosystem had moved on: the market shifted to Ethereum's ERC-20 standard, which founder Flavien Charlon called more flexible and powerful than Bitcoin-based systems. Unpredictable Bitcoin transaction fees and confirmation times also made it hard to argue Bitcoin was a good platform for tokens. Users were advised to withdraw funds and export private keys by March 31; the wallet, block explorer, and API all closed.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
Coinprism ended operations.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
The company never raised venture capital.
- 02
In March 2018 it shut down its online wallet, block explorer and API; users had to withdraw funds or export their private keys by March 31.
- 03
No audited loss figure was publicly disclosed.