Bank of America wins patent for storing crypto holdings

The patent was published by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on 13 November 2018. The patent filing outlines different interactions between customers’ crypto holdings and an enterprise account. The latter functions to securely store or aggregate customers’ crypto deposits. More precisely, in one proposed setup, the enterprise account itself would be able to conduct transactions on customers’ behalf, debiting or crediting the customer accounts in question as appropriate. The patent outlines methods for storing private keys associated with customers’ accounts, determining public keys, and generating “vault keys” for storage.

Moreover, the patent suggests that aggregating customer crypto deposits in an enterprise account could eliminate the need for the enterprise’s customers to use a third-party exchange to convert currency. Thus, this facilitates the purchase and exchange of currencies and cryptocurrencies and it reduces the fees associated with the process.

The document deals with tackling crypto-fiat conversions, suggesting that the system would determine a plurality of exchange rates associated with converting the first currency into the second currency. The Bank of America has filed over 50 blockchain and cryptocurrency-related patents up until now, even if it maintains a publicly critical stance toward decentralised crypto assets such as Bitcoin (BTC).