On April 12, 2018, The United States Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application by the BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION, in which it is demonstrated that despite its openly anti-crypto stance, the U.S. financial giant is exploring the use of blockchain technologies for its own benefit.
This type of positions has also been evident in other large corporations such as JP Morgan, which criticizes the use of crypto money based blockchain technologies without being critical of the development of blockchain technologies themselves.
The patent is called “AUTOMATED DATA AUTHENTICATION AND SERVICE AUTHORIZATION VIA CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEYS IN A PRIVATE BLOCKCHAIN” and seeks to solve some problems arising from the centralization of traditional methods of data storage and transmission that according to the text are susceptible to manipulation by third parties:
“Embodiments of the present invention provide a system for authenticating records belonging to an individual or entity and providing authorized access to said records to service providers.
Embodiments of the invention utilize a private blockchain to store various types of records to be conveyed to the service providers.
In this way, the individual or entity may securely store on the blockchain all records relevant to service providers, then provide the service providers with secured access to said records such that the providers may access only the specific records for which they are authorized, e.g. a healthcare provider may access only the healthcare records on the blockchain.”
The patent was introduced in 2016 and demonstrates the importance with which banking has taken the study of blockchain technologies for the improvement of its business models.
Previously, other major players in the financial industry have also benefited from blockchain technologies:
- SAMA announced a few weeks ago its partnership with RIPPLE Inc to use its cross-payment clearing technology.
- Jp Morgan Chase announced that it would use its own blockchain for the development of its business model
- Royal Bank of Canada also mentioned that it was researching the development of Blockchain technologies to improve its platform.
- The SWIFT International Payments System announced that it is investigating and developing a chain of blocks to enable it to process payments more efficiently. They announced a first test whose results have been highly satisfactory
- The Bank of England also announced a partnership with a Blockchain Startup to set up a blockchain to protect the security of its users’ data.
- Malaysia also announced the possibility of integrating the use of blockchain technologies into traditional means of data validation.
Excellent news for the world of the blockchain, since it is demonstrated that even the most fervent attackers against Distributed Ledger Technologies have been able to benefit from their development.