Bank of America (BoA) has quietly been amassing a wealth of blockchain technology patents over the past several years, but it is their most recent filing that has analysts believing that the banking giant may be ready to go crypto in the near future. While no major banks in the U.S. have made any meaningful forays into the cryptocurrency field, BoA has poised itself to be a leader in the relatively untapped market. The interest BoA has in cryptocurrency isn't investing it, but rather offering people the ability to use it more readily, and possibly at some point, allow it for deposit within their banking system.
According to Blockonomi, BoA now has more than 50 blockchain patents, and what the combination of technologies covered under those patents seems to point toward is becoming a large-scale payment processor for cryptocurrencies. While many advocates of cryptocurrency site privacy as one of the main reasons for using it, using cryptocurrency isn't always very easy, even for one such as Bitcoin which is very established. There simply aren't many stores, restaurants, or any type of outlet that accepts payment in cryptocurrency.