Some people in the bitcoin world—the believers still waving the flag for the leading digital currency, which is currently trading at $427—will tell you that the phrase “The Internet of Money” is widely understood as a reference to bitcoin and its underlying technology, the blockchain. But Uphold, a “cloud bank” startup that launched in 2014, will tell you it is their corporate slogan. It applied to register the phrase as its trademark for financial services back in September 2015 with the US Patent & Trademark Office, and is far along in the process.

Andreas Antonopoulos doesn’t like that. The cybersecurity expert and author of "Mastering Bitcoin" has waged a war with Uphold, encouraging his 47,000 Twitter followers to help him find the earliest uses of the words “Internet of money.” Uphold’s adoption of the slogan, he tells Yahoo Finance, “perverts the meaning of the phrase.”

The law is on Uphold’s side; there’s not much Antonopoulos can do to stop Uphold from getting its registration. But of all people, Antonopoulos is a loud enemy for a fintech company to have.

Bitreserve, now known as @UpholdInc is in my opinion a perfect example of a trademark bully with questionable ethicshttps://t.co/GAYlkIEkeR — AndreasMAntonopoulos (@aantonop) March 16, 2016

To understand the complexity of this feud, we must step back and examine the two sides and their reputations in the financial tech industry.

Uphold is a “cloud money vault” that lets you convert funds between 25 different currencies or four precious metals. When it first launched, in 2014, customers had to make deposits in bitcoin, and the company had a different name: Bitreserve. It has since rebranded, and in a way, ditched association with bitcoin. Uphold customers can still deposit bitcoin or exchange other currencies to bitcoin, but they don’t need to start with bitcoin. You could deposit U.S. dollars, for example, and convert them to pesos to send money to a friend in Mexico, never dealing with bitcoin in any way.

Uphold now boasts more than $100 million in funds held in Uphold wallets, and says more than $900 million in transaction volume has been exchanged on the site. It is also part of a pilot program with the Antwerp World Diamond Centre that encourages a large portion of the world’s diamond traders to use Uphold for conversion of funds.

Uphold CEO Anthony Watson, whose resume includes executive roles at Citi (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), Barclays (BCS) and Nike (NKE), has publicly expressed doubts about bitcoin, which has not ingratiated him to the vocal community of enthusiasts with high hopes for the currency. “I’ll be surprised if bitcoin is here in five years,” he told Fortune last year. “It’s a means to an end. The value of bitcoin isn’t the currency, but the technology. I think once the world becomes more accustomed and attuned to the platform of bitcoin, the noise will go away, and the currency will go away too.” On forums like Reddit, bitcoin believers have disparaged Watson and Uphold.

From Uphold's web site More

Here's why the dispute between Uphold and Antonopoulos should matter to the larger financial market: Uphold is one of many fintech companies, along with Dwolla, TransferWise, Venmo, and Xoom, to name a few, that make a similar value claim: shorter transfer times and smaller transfer fees. That has been a popular selling point of bitcoin, too—but bitcoin risks collapsing due to problems with its own infrastructure. Meanwhile, 45 major global banks have signed on to a consortium to test out a form of blockchain, the technology on which bitcoin runs—but a closed version of blockchain, without bitcoin.

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