According to multiple sources close to Overstock, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved a S-3 filing for online retailer Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) to issue new publicly traded shares of the company on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Overstock's t0 (tee-zero) platform has been working on bringing equity trades and settlement to the blockchain since it was first announced in April 2015. In July, Overstock sold the first cryptobond on the blockchain. As a proof of concept, FNY Managed Accounts agreed to buy the $5 million bond, with assurances in place in case the technology failed.
The t0 platform is built utilizing colored coin technology, which allows for fractions of bitcoin to be used to track ownership of many assets besides bitcoin. For example, a colored coin could be used as a token to prove that an individual owns shares of Overstock. This technology is built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain and is secured by the distributed public ledger.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:01PM
Here is the spec for colored coins:
https://github.com/Colored-Coins/Colored-Coins-Protocol-Specification/wiki/Coloring-Scheme [github.com]
I don't quite understand how it works, but to answer your question, yes, you should be able to tell if a coin given to you is colored by checking the OP_RETURN data. If the protocol is 0x4343, then you have a colored coin.