stable coins
By Dan Saada
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What Circle Gets Out of This. Nearly 1,000 issued patents is not a small haul. For a company whose core business is stablecoin…
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IBM's Quiet Exit from Blockchain's Frontline. IBM was once one of the loudest voices in enterprise blockchain.
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Supply Chain Blockchain Is Still a Real Business. The TradeLens shutdown scared off some optimism, but supply chain blockchain didn't die with it.
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Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, is buying nearly 1,000 blockchain patents from IBM.
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IBM's blockchain portfolio spans over 680 patent families. The patents Circle is picking up focus mainly on supply chain applications, an area where blockchain has arguably made…
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Nearly 1,000 issued patents is not a small haul. For a company whose core business is stablecoin issuance, branching into supply chain blockchain infrastructure might seem like a…
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Circle can also use the portfolio defensively. Owning that kind of intellectual property makes it harder for competitors to build in the same space without running into licensing…
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The deal is pending regulatory approval. Circle and IBM haven't said anything publicly about the timeline for closing or how integration will work once it does.
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IBM was once one of the loudest voices in enterprise blockchain. The company poured resources into Hyperledger Fabric, built out IBM Food Trust, partnered with Maersk on…
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Selling nearly 1,000 patents to Circle fits the pattern of a company pulling back from a bet that didn't fully pay off. IBM hasn't abandoned tech innovation — far from it.
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See also: Brian Armstrong Advocates for Blockchain and AI to Collaborate, Not Compete
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Circle stepping into this space with IBM's patent base gives it a technical foundation that would take years to build from scratch. That's not nothing.
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The stablecoin market has also matured enough that issuers like Circle can't just sit on USDC and wait for volume to come.
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So the acquisition probably makes sense on multiple levels. Competitive positioning. Defensive IP. New product surface area.
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See also: Dango Shuts Down Trading and Layer 1 Blockchain Amid 17 Crypto Failures in 2026
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