Goldman Sachs’ Sole Crypto-Currency Patent

Goldman Sachs seems to have a single patent (U.S. Patent 9,704,143) directed to crypto-currency.  The patent claims aggregating “a cryptographic currency representing a security” to obtain the same security with a bigger value.  The specification gives the example that “100 individual IBM [cryptographic currency] (i.e., each worth 1 IBM share) can be aggregated by the described technology into a single IBM [cryptographic currency] having a ‘face value’ of 100 IBM shares.”

Claim 1 of the patent reads as follows:

1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage device having contents adapted to cause a programmed computer system to perform operations comprising: receiving, from a source computing node in a network, one or more electronic transaction messages,

 wherein the one or more electronic transaction messages include at least transaction information and a digital signature of the source computing node,

 wherein the transaction information includes at least: a recipient electronic address of a recipient computing node; a cryptographic currency representing a security and a first position, the first position representative of a first quantity of the security; and an ownership history of the cryptographic currency;

internally verifying an authenticity of the one or more electronic transaction messages based on the digital signature;

internally verifying the source computing node as owner of the cryptographic currency based on the ownership history using a ledger; receiving electronic verification messages from a plurality of other computing nodes in the network, the electronic verification messages including information providing external verification of the source computing node as the owner of the cryptographic currency;

recording, in the ledger, a change in the ownership history from the source computing node to the recipient computing node in response to the ownership history being verified internally and by the other computing nodes;

transmitting electronic change messages updating the change in ownership history to the source computing node and the other computing nodes;

aggregating the cryptographic currency with another cryptographic currency representing the same security into an aggregated cryptographic currency, the aggregated cryptographic currency representing the same security and a second position, the second position representative of a second quantity of the security, the second quantity of the security larger than the first quantity of the security;

 and updating the ledger to perfect ownership rights in the aggregated cryptographic currency.