In 2019, the Austrian Post company launched a physical stamp that had a "connection" into the Ethereum blockchain, called the Crypto Stamp. It had a value of 6,90 EUR and was well received by the public - it was sold out practically in a few days and after a short time every single Crypto Stamp was gone over the counter.

While it is sometimes said here in Austria, that this was the "first crypto stamp", this is not entirely true - there were a few stamps before that, but not issued in Austria (source: http://crypto-stamps.com/ ). Nevertheless it was certainly the first item tied to the crypto world that is backed by a state (yes, the State of Austria holds a significant amount in the Austrian Post company).

The Crypto Stamp from the Austrian Post is actually an ERC721 token on the Ethereum blockchain and can be examined here: https://etherscan.io/address/0x7e789E2dd1340971De0A9bca35b14AC0939Aa330 

The individual token identification is printed on each stamp and this identification is tied to a property of the ERC721 token, being the color of the stamp. There are multiple colors, red is the rarest, while black is the most common.

Now it's 2020 and the Austrian Post has announced to launch a second edition of the Crypto Stamp - the Crypto Stamp v2.0.
As before, it's going to be a token on the Ethereum blockchain. There will be 4 editions, each with a different "signature animal": red (honey badger), green (llama), orange (panda), blue (dog). The launch is on the horizon - apparently it will be released to the public and available for purchase in "late June", as I was told.

I have tried to get some more info on the features of that new version, but it is scarce and the press texts do not yield many useful bits. Apparently each of the 4 editions has a different color and is issued in a number of 60.000 pieces at the price of 7 EUR per piece. It seems technically it's just the same again what they did with the first version (just times 4), only that the color of the stamps is known beforehand - so you can pick which one you want...

While most of this is marketing, I believe that these items indeed do have practical value. You can for example stick them to physical objects and administer special information about the specific token in another token (custom programmed for these purposes by you I mean) or even off-chain, if you sign it in a proper way. More on my opinion about that maybe in a separate post...

Have you heard of the Crypto Stamp before? Will you buy the new version? What do you think about it?

Link: https://crypto.post.at 

(the thumbnail image is a screenshot from the Post website and is not aimed to violate any copyright; all info in this article was obtained via public ways)

cheers