[spiderbro]

Here are a couple of uses cases off the top of my head. This is by no means comprehensive.

* The ability to issue shares in your company/startup and have them be traded from Day 1. Unlike BTCT/BitFunder/Havelock, Counterparty is a P2P protocol and cannot be shut down by regulatory agencies. Kind of like BitTorrent.

* The ability to trade XCP for Bitcoin and vice versa without relying on any fallible counterparty. There is no centralized exchange to steal money from you or fail like MtGox. There is no escrow required to trade with peers because Counterparty guarantees atomicity of transactions.

* The ability to place a variety of different bets. Currently the protocol has support for simple contracts-for-difference (CFDs) and binary Equal/NotEqual bets. Why is this useful? You could for example hedge your exchange rate risk completely by being short a XCP/USD contract. This allows you to hold your wealth in cryptocurrency but have no exchange rate risk. Another use case is sports betting. There was a friendly bet on the Super Bowl, for example.