The Western Union Company, a Financial Services and Communication Company based in America filed a new patent on July the 5th with the US Patent and Trademark Office. The patent intents on ‘receiving and handling secure transfers’ in the electronic transfer network space which features the inter-device-transfer of cryptocurrency or digital currency from users located in different locations.

The patent stipulated that the ‘electronic transfer network’ can be either be a cryptocurrency network or other various network. The network will employ encryption protocols and procedures for the execution of cryptocurrency transfers.

It also names Bitcoin [BTC]’s peer-to-peer network [P2P] payment network, Litecoin [LTC] network and other blockchain networks as a case for electronic transaction network.

Should the sender or receiver want to transfer cryptocurrency, the development might employ several computational devices used in the cryptocurrency network such as client devices, management servers, and external systems.

Below is an example that was stated in the abstract:

” A client device may securely store a private cryptographic key associated with a cryptocurrency account of a user, and may use specialized client software (e.g., cryptocurrency wallet application) to generate digital cryptographic signatures using the private cryptographic key and data identifying the details of the requested cryptocurrency transfer.”

As stated by the patent, in order to produce a hash value signature needed for the private key of a particular cryptocurrency account, the client application will make use of a ‘cryptographic hash function.’

The patent submitted by Western Union read the following:

“Recipient client devices, as well as other servers/systems in the network, may use the public key of the sender to decrypt the cryptographic signature and verify the authenticity of the requested cryptocurrency transfer. Some or all of the client devices, servers, and/or external systems may use databases or other secure storage to independently maintain and update electronic ledgers for tracking the current balances associated with cryptocurrency accounts”

The computing servers and devices of the cryptocurrency network could also be used in mining operations. The servers can be organized into systems that will be configured to execute complex mathematical algorithms to generate a new cryptocurrency.

Because of this, a number of client devices, servers, and external systems might be used for mining. This could require dedicated cryptocurrency mining hardware and software systems/devices such as ASICs.

The computing devices may also be used in some situations to ‘generate and store universal public ledgers and/or transaction chains for the cryptocurrency network.’ The digital network transaction chain can be ‘stored in a distributed database by multiple different data nodes at different servers within the network.’

For this, the patent gives the example written below:

“Blockchain technology may be used to implement a decentralized distributed database which may be hosted by a combination of client devices, data management servers, and/or external systems. The blockchain may store a distributed electronic ledger and/or universal transaction chain for the cryptocurrency network.

The blockchain may be accessed by individual client software (e.g., wallet applications) of client devices, which may propose a cryptocurrency value transfer to be added to the blockchain. After confirming that there is sufficient cryptocurrency value in the sender’s account, a miner node within the cryptocurrency network 100 may bundle the transfer with other transactions to create a new block to be added to the blockchain.

In some cases, adding blocks to the blockchain may involve miner nodes repeatedly executing cryptographic hash functions, ensuring that the blockchain cannot be tampered with by any malicious systems within the network.”