Visa Worldwide has filed for a cryptocurrency system patent that’s meant to interchange bodily foreign money. The system, which makes use of each central banks and business banks, leverages a non-public blockchain to enhance the fee ecosystem.
Visa’s Cryptocurrency Patent Submitting
The US Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO) revealed on Thursday a patent utility entitled “digital fiat foreign money,” filed by Visa Worldwide Service Affiliation on Nov. 8, 2019.
The submitting is for a fiat-linked cryptocurrency system utilizing “a non-public permissioned distributed ledger platform.” It describes a central pc, its tasks, and key roles of the system: central entities, validating entities, redeeming entities, and customers. “A central entity could also be a central financial institution, which regulates a financial provide,” the doc particulars. Validating entities “are blockchain nodes, which can be friends reminiscent of banks.” Redeeming entities “might settle for bodily foreign money for trade for digital fiat foreign money,” reminiscent of an ATM or a financial institution department location.
The central entity pc generates the digital foreign money that’s recorded on a blockchain and “might decide {that a} explicit digital foreign money unit needs to be added to or faraway from the blockchain.” In response to the submitting’s summary:
The central entity pc causes removing of the bodily foreign money from circulation in a fiat foreign money system.
The submitting additional explains that the fee ecosystem might turn out to be 100% digital and “money could also be faraway from the markets in a frictionless method” to enhance the fee ecosystem. “Customers might maintain digital foreign money with the identical denomination because the native bodily foreign money.”
It additionally notes that after the digital fiat foreign money is issued, “A person or financial institution might switch the digital foreign money from pockets to pockets or retailer the digital foreign money on a wise card and switch the good card to a different entity.”
A consensus mechanism has not been chosen for the system’s blockchain. “The consensus mechanism might differ relying on the protocol carried out. Some instance consensus mechanisms … are proof of stake, Byzantine fault-tolerant algorithms, and crash-fault tolerant algorithms,” the submitting particulars. Different mechanisms explored embrace a duplicate of Ethereum, Hyperledger Material, and zero-knowledge proofs. The total submitting will be discovered right here.
A Visa spokesperson was quoted by Forbes on Thursday as saying: “Annually we search patents for a whole bunch of latest concepts … Whereas not all patents will end in new merchandise or options, Visa respects mental property and we’re actively working to guard our ecosystem, our improvements and the Visa model.” Commenting on Visa’s cryptocurrency patent submitting, lawyer Jake Chervinsky tweeted:
You possibly can’t patent one thing you didn’t invent or that isn’t new, so Visa’s patent utility needs to be so slender that even when it points, it gained’t be a lot use even when it was enforceable. Finance incumbents gained’t have the ability to use patent regulation to cease the crypto trade.
Different corporations have tried to patent numerous cryptocurrency techniques. For instance, Microsoft was lately granted a world patent by the World Mental Property Group for a cryptocurrency system utilizing physique exercise information.
What do you concentrate on Visa’s crypto patent submitting? Tell us within the feedback part beneath.
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