I am working on a business that will need to issue stocks in the next few months. I would like to use the magic of the Bitcoin blockchain to record these stocks as it is the most secure ledger in the world.

As I delve into the world of colored coins it can get rather confusing. There is no single "colored coin" standard, just a few different approaches that are not compatible with one another. Some stray far away from Bitcoin almost to the point of creating their own alt coin. A few are completely Bitcoin blockchain based. Those are the ones I prefer as I am most confident in Bitcoin.

The main protocol I am leaning toward is Open Assets. It uses the OP_RETURN of a transaction to include 20 bytes of data which includes the amount of stocks transferred and a URL link to some meta data to help with visualizing the asset. Very simple and clean, not a lot of overhead for the blockchain and it already has several implementations including an offline and online wallet. Most importantly, Overstock and NASDAQ are using this protocol for their attempts at stocks on the blockchain.

The latest protocol released is from Colu at coloredcoins.org which promises more features such as bittorrent compatability (useful for not relying on a central web server to store meta data) and a few other things. But it is in its early phase and I do not know much about the actual protocol yet.

Others such as Factom, Counterparty and Ethereum seem very altcoinish. With some even ripping on Bitcoin in their white papers, so I have no confidence in them.

I read one article where Mike Hearn says he is not a big fan of colored coins using the Bitcoin blockchain as a way to store assets, calling it a lazy approach. I am curious about why it would be considered a lazy approach and what would be a more sophisticated approach. I would think that using the Bitcoin blockchain for assets gives it more intrinsic value such that even if the price drops, Bitcoin would still be necessary for many other things (like gold being useful as jewelry).

Has anyone else looked into this much? What are your opinions on the different approaches?