Surprisingly it's not a tech company, like IBM, who leads with the most number of cryptocurrency patents but one from the banking sector. Bank of America is ahead of the pack thus far with 45 crypto related patents to it's name. EITC Holdings (42), Coinplug (39), Alibaba (36) and IBM (34) round out the top five. This however has to be taken with a grain of salt as an approved patents does not indicate that the specific function/technology has any merit. Nonetheless, the exponential growth of patents, as indicated by the graph, is a great indicator of the interest crypto has amassed recently.
Image and Article Source: Bitcoin