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Bitcoin Patents The Almighty Buck United States

Bank of America Wins Patent For Crypto Exchange System (coindesk.com) 52

Posted by BeauHD from the new-era dept.
New submitter psnyder shares a report from CoinDesk: [The patent] outlined a potential cryptocurrency exchange system that would convert one digital currency into another. Further, this system would be automated, establishing the exchange rate between the two currencies based on external data feeds. The patent describes a potential three-part system, where the first part would be a customer's account and the other two would be accounts owned by the business running the system. The user would store their chosen cryptocurrency through the customer account. The second account, referred to as a "float account," would act as a holding area for the cryptocurrency the customer is selling, while the third account, also a float account, would contain the equivalent amount of the cryptocurrency the customer is converting their funds to. That third account would then deposit the converted funds back into the original customer account for withdrawal. The proposed system would collect data from external information sources on cryptocurrency exchange rates, and use this data to establish its own optimal rate. The patent notes this service would be for enterprise-level customers, meaning that if the bank pursues this project, it would be offered to businesses.
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Bank of America Wins Patent For Crypto Exchange System More

Bank of America Wins Patent For Crypto Exchange System

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  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lab Rat Jason ( 2495638 ) on Thursday December 07, 2017 @06:32PM (#55698749)

    Did they just patent "Escrow, but on a computer"?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by campuscodi ( 4234297 ) on Thursday December 07, 2017 @06:40PM (#55698785)
      From the description, pretty much.... but it's crypto-escrow, not regular escrow. Ya' know!?!

    • Not even just escrow... "paper currency exchange, but with a computer for DIGITAL currency!"

      WTF... is there any other reasonable way to do currency exchange, other than having a float of each currency you trade?

    • "Crypto exchange system" sounds closer to PGP to me.

    • > Did they just patent "Escrow, but on a computer"?

      No.

      The patent is a bit hard to read, even as patents go. Best I can tell, they patented a particular system of using customers' public and private keys in two different cryptosystems to key the "vault" accounts used for an exchange, where the customer's balance on the block chain may have transactions awaiting confirmation. But it is a particularly difficult patent to read, especially if you don't know the technical details of crypto-currency.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        The patent is a bit hard to read, even as patents go. Best I can tell, they patented a particular system of using customers' public and private keys in two different cryptosystems to key the "vault" accounts used for an exchange, where the customer's balance on the block chain may have transactions awaiting confirmation. But it is a particularly difficult patent to read, especially if you don't know the technical details of crypto-currency.

        So it's a bluff patent designed to say "We want to do this, but are

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waveclaw ( 43274 )

      How is this 2015 patent different from shapshifto.io [shapeshift.io], an operating business doing this since 2014? It is just because they don't mention blockchains or smart contracts anywhere?

      I guess not using a blockchain is innovative financial technology now?

  • Also news.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Banks patent new method to scam customers.

  • Prior Art (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How the fuck is this not prior art? Literally Mt. Gox, Coinbase, etc

    • First to file. Patent reform. Prior art no longer key. Thanks to the previous administration. Really messed me up, I have to patent my own work now to keep someone else from doing it, just so I can give it away for free. If I didn't someone else could, and charge for what I did - even admit I did it, but still own my stuff. As usual, the new law favors the rich. And there you were thinking that was partisan. I go back to Eisenhower, and the trend is all help the powerful become more so. No exceptio

      • Considering I've had a patent filed after March 16 2013 and have had the patent examiner reply back with prior art they claimed invalidated my patent, you're simply full of shit. Prior art still matters.

        In my case I rebutted their claims and clarified the novel aspect of my patent. Have not heard back for several months now so I am assuming no news = good news.

      • If someone like ShapeShift wanted to challenge it, they could show that they had prior art in effect at the time of filing. They would most likely have to outspend BofA on lawyers, which is unlikely. In addition, BofA only has to have 3 points of differentiation from a company like ShapeShift - even if they already had a patent - for it to be a valid new patent. That could be something as small as whether or not to display a QR code on the screen.

        The whole system is broken and favors large corporations o

  • a single $100 bill for a cash deposit over $5k. Bank of America's fees are killing us. Tellers don't get paid that much, and I know since I used to work as one at BoA, so 30 cents for each bill when you were expected to count about 100 bills per minute is great profit for them.

    • Maybe they'll patent a machine that can count bills - or maybe even weigh them
    • There is absolutely no way I would do business with a bank that charged a fee like that. That's ridiculous. That's what they're there for.

  • Prior Art (Score:3)

    by zlives ( 2009072 ) on Thursday December 07, 2017 @06:59PM (#55698865)

    3 card monte

  • bank patents (Score:5, Funny)

    by GodWasAnAlien ( 206300 ) on Thursday December 07, 2017 @07:18PM (#55698935)

    bank patents:

    1998 - Banking on the internet
    2006 - Banking on a phone
    2017 - Banking on a blockchain
    2025 - Banking on a quantum computer
    2040 - Banking in your brain
    2100 - Banking on non-electronic pieces of paper. using non-electronic ink writing devices

  • The whole point of any currency is that you at least hold onto it for the short term of say a week to a month. The more people do that the more intrinsic value the currency has.

    Official Bitcoin itself is flawed. Transactions take 15 minutes which unless your dealing with thousands of dollars is too long for your everyday POS transaction for coffee.

    What they are describing is an escrow exchange stream. An automated stream system of currency conversions(in time). Nothing new or non obvious there.

    It's basicall

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mr307 ( 49185 )

      The point of currency is for trade, not to hold. So called intrinsic value by holding is nonsense, if no one is trading it for things they want.

      This is one of the many reasons that bitcoin will fail, as the perceived value increases more people will hold it and not trade it, till the bubble bursts and everyone 'loses something'.

  • If a small company did this the patent would either: 1) Never happen 2) get nullified very quickly.

    Can we fix (destroy) the US's broken patent system?

  • It seems like BoA is trying to solve a problem that is already solved.

  • Should I be happy because they'll almost certainly go after people burning energy on useless crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, or angry because patents on software methods should never be granted in the first place?

  • "Crypto" is a well-established short form for "cryptography". It has nothing to do with "crypto currency", except that the latter uses the former, nicely demonstrating what was first. Stop abusing the language for desperate attempts to sound cool.

    • "Crypto" is a well-established short form for "cryptography". It has nothing to do with "crypto currency", except that the latter uses the former, nicely demonstrating what was first. Stop abusing the language for desperate attempts to sound cool.

      It has a second meaning now. Words have done that for all of recorded history. Deal.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Using "crypto" for cryptography and cryptographic currency both is about as stupid as it gets. But I guess some people prefer to sound fake-cool over being understood.

    • "Crypto" is simply a prefix meaning "hidden", so there's no reason why it should stand for cryptography any more than cryptozoology. OTOH, there are well-established cases where the prefix takes over in this sense. For example, "automobile" became just "auto" in many languages. So instead of driving "mobile", the thing that moves, people drive "self", which is probably fitting in this "culture".

      In this particular case, "cryptocurrency" is actually shorthand for currency based on cryptography; it's not ne

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