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In April 2018, Amazon Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon, was granted a patent relating to a “technology for a streaming data marketplace” by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The technology underlying the patent is described as gathering (online) data streams from various sources and enhancing those streams “by correlating the raw data with additional data.” The patent description lists a number of potential use cases for the streaming data feeds that participants in the market place are offering subscriptions to. One notable use case relates to “bitcoin transactions,” with the ultimate goal of identifying users of the virtual currency by their Bitcoin addresses.
Continue Reading The Bitcoin Implications of Amazon’s New Streaming Data Patent

Any digital record of bank deposits opens up the possibility that its underlying set of data may be copied and that the nominal amount deposited may be spent more than once. With conventional bank deposits, banks monitor the digital records and are trusted to ensure their validity. With so-called “digital currencies” like Bitcoin, by contrast, the ledger containing the record of all transactions by all users is available to the public. Rather than requiring users to have trust in a central third party, reliance is placed upon the network and the algorithmic rules established to reliably change the ledger. The authentication technologies underpinning Bitcoin – known as distributed ledger or Blockchain-technologies – enable multiple instances of data to be synchronized and updated.
Continue Reading Blockchain Technologies Move further into the Mainstream

Virtual currencies, especially Bitcoins, have attracted much public attention as well as scholarly interest. Many related issues have, however, not yet been fully clarified and are still being addressed in specialized literature. Particularly whether, despite the fact that they do not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction, Bitcoins could be qualified as “money”, both from a legal and an economic point of view. From a legal perspective, the question whether or not a medium fulfils economic functions of money has proven to be relevant – for example, some US court rulings have taken a functional approach when qualifying Bitcoins as money in a legal sense.
Continue Reading Do Bitcoins Fulfil Economic Functions of Money? Some Courts (and Advocates-General) Seem to Think So