On January 2 Counterparty, the peer-to-peer financial platform built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, announced the celebration of its 1st Year Anniversary.

On January 2, 2014, Counterparty emerged as an innovative project with a mission to provide a peer-to-peer financial market within the Bitcoin protocol and represent a step towards the democratization of finance. One year later, Counterparty has evolved into an advanced platform for creating financial instruments on top of Bitcoin.

In October, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne announced a partnership with Counterparty to build a cutting-edge stock market, code-named Medici, on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, and help Bitcoin do for Wall Street what it has already begun to do for payments. In November, Counterparty announced that its developers successfully ported the Ethereum Project’s programming language over to the Counterparty platform, enabling users to execute Ethereum smart contracts on the more secure Bitcoin blockchain.

Also read: The March of Counterparty – Highlights from Reddit AMA

Of the announcement, Robby Dermody, Co-founder of Counterparty, noted:

“Adam, Evan and I started Counterparty with the lofty goal of creating a full-fledged platform that allowed the potential of the Bitcoin blockchain to be realized. Like most Big Ideas, it was unclear if we’d be truly successful with this at the time, but we decided to keep things simple, and focus on building and enhancing the technology, day-by-day, and working with the needs of the users of the product as they arose. A whirlwind of a year down the road, we can look back with gratitude to the many that put their faith in Counterparty by burning bitcoins, building a business, site, or tool on the technology, buying XCP, and more. We’re proud of what we’ve been able to do together so far, and are excited about the tremendous growth and change that 2015 can bring for blockchain technology adoption, and for Counterparty itself.”

To celebrate the anniversary, the Counterparty team is inviting everyone to show their support on Twitter using the hashtag #CounterpartyTurnsOne and get a chance to win a $20 coupon to spend in the Counterparty merchandise store.

Counterparty is a free and open platform for peer-to-peer finance built on the Bitcoin blockchain. Live since January 2014, it extends Bitcoin’s functionality from a payment network into a full-fledged financial platform.

Images from Counterparty and Shutterstock.