Winklevoss IP, which is owned by the brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has received a patent for the concept of a cryptocurrency exchange trust fund (ETF).
The application was filed in November 2017 and was approved as a patent with a public announcement on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website on Tuesday. The patent describes the method of "providing an exchange traded product holding digital math-based assets are disclosed", as well as issuing shares tied to this ETF. This is not the first patent related to the cryptocurrency industry received by Winklevoss brothers.
Earlier in April, the Winklevoss IP received a patent for "a system, method and software product for processing secure transactions within a cloud computing system", which would prevent “unauthorized access of information over external data connections”. In total, according to information from open sources, the world's first official bitcoin-billionaires have received seven patents related to digital assets.
How exactly the patented concept of the cryptocurrency ETF will be implemented in practice is still unknown. The twins have been trying to launch the bitcoin-ETF since the beginning of the year. In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected their offer.