Don’t be fooled by their buttoned-up appearance - banks are more into crypto than you think.
CCN reports that one of Bank of America’s most recently secured patents includes a cryptocurrency aggregation system, “one in which big companies store customers’ crypto deposits in an enterprise account involving vaults and offline storage rather than taking on the risk themselves.”
CCN notes that while blockchain patents are nothing new for banks, this patent is more solidly in the camp of cryptocurrency.
Bank of America, which filed this patent in 2014, anticipates enterprise use cases as the cryptocurrencies matures.
“Enterprises may handle a large number of financial transactions on a daily basis. As technology advances, financial transactions involving cryptocurrency have become more common. For some enterprises, it may be desirable to aggregate cryptocurrency deposited by customers in an enterprise account.”
“Enterprises may handle a large number of financial transactions on a daily basis. As technology advances, financial transactions involving cryptocurrency have become more common. For some enterprises, it may be desirable to aggregate cryptocurrency deposited by customers in an enterprise account.”
The system Bank of America outlines consists of a memory (account storage) and a processor (for cryptocurrency deposits across coins as well as public key identification and matching), according to CCN. A public key of the business allows the processor to aggregate the cryptocurrency in an enterprise account.
CCN posits that this move towards the enterprise could foster more mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency, but that an ideological rift may widen between the peer-to-peer ethos of cryptocurrency and the notorious fees synonymous with banks such as Bank of America.
Bank of America, for what it’s worth, sees its system as a way for cryptocurrency holders to avoid the usual conversion costs as it “negates the need for customers of the enterprise to use a third-party currency exchange to execute a desired currency exchange,” according to its filing.
For some, the bank’s spate of cryptocurrency patents are more flash than substance, filed to build the bank’s persona as an innovator. CCN states one such critic is Michael Wuehler, former Bank of America VP and an inventor listed on prior Bank of America blockchain patents, who tweeted that these patents are “meaningless.”
