US Patent Issued to Chicago Mercantile Exchange on July 1 for "System for physically delivering virtual currencies" (British, American Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,346,964, issued on July 1, was assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (Chicago).

"System for physically delivering virtual currencies" was invented by Ryan Pierce (Chicago), Sandra Ro (London) and Mansoor Ahmed (Naperville, Ill.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods are disclosed for settling futures contracts that are based on virtual currencies. A clearing counter-party operates a clearing counter-party computer that may oversee physical delivery of virtual currency between a buyer and seller. The clearing counter-party computer does not take possession of the virtual currency and monitors a publicly viewable ledger t...