January 1, 2014 - 2140 BTC burned for 2.6 million XCP

In January, in one of the lesser-known corners of the Internet, people were burning bitcoins. Depending on where you pegged the price, anywhere from $1.6 million to $2 million worth of the digital currency was effectively destroyed, and a website called Counterparty.co was stoking the coals. Run by a group of anonymous developers, Counterparty was distributing a newly created digital currency in exchange for bitcoins. Except Counterparty wasn’t actually accepting the bitcoins people sent them. Not a single one. Instead, these bitcoins were being delivered to a special online wallet that rendered them provably and permanently unspendable — a process known as proof-of-burn. To those who called involvement in the fledgling Bitcoin industry foolish, the team behind Counterparty appeared downright nihilistic. But to those paying close attention, Counterparty had just kicked off Bitcoin’s second act. from Source