sandmark.com
Circle has acquired nearly 1,000 blockchain patents from IBM, strengthening its control over technology used in payments, banking and enterprise infrastructure as digital assets move deeper into regulated finance.
The portfolio contains more than 680 patent families covering blockchain systems, financial services, insurance, supply-chain verification and secure cloud operations. Circle said the acquisition makes it the largest US holder of blockchain patents, a claim with real weight behind it: a December 2025 analysis by patent analytics firm PatSnap had already credited IBM with 790 blockchain patents, among the largest holdings of any US company at the time. Circle itself received its first blockchain patent only in December 2023. Neither company disclosed the transaction price.
IBM hands over a decade of patents
The patents will support Circle's wider product range, including the $USDC stablecoin, its cross-border Circle Payments Network, the Arc enterprise blockchain and tools designed for autonomous software agents.
"Intellectual property is critical to advancing our mission and expanding adoption of onchain infrastructure," Circle General Counsel Sarah Wilson said. Circle and IBM also plan to explore further commercial opportunities.
The sale comes as IBM concentrates its strategy around AI, hybrid cloud and quantum computing. It does not indicate that IBM is leaving blockchain-related services entirely, and the companies did not clarify which patents IBM will continue to hold.
IBM reported disappointing preliminary second-quarter results on 14 Jul, sending its stock down 25% that day, the worst single-session decline in the company's 115-year trading history, surpassing even the Black Monday crash of October 1987.
Building a regulated blockchain platform
Circle's purchase extends a strategy that combines blockchain technology with banking licences, custody relationships and institutional distribution.
The company received final approval on 10 Jul to establish Circle National Trust, a federally supervised national trust bank. The institution will initially provide digital asset custody for Circle and its affiliates, with the option to serve a limited number of banks and financial institutions. It may later manage the reserves supporting $USDC.
Circle has also secured regulatory approvals across the European Union, UK, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Bermuda, Canada and Japan. Its licences are intended to make $USDC and its payment products accessible through existing financial rules rather than outside them.
Traditional banks are moving alongside it. BNY added $USDC to its institutional custody platform in June, while Standard Chartered began giving eligible clients access to $USDC minting and redemption through its Dubai operations.
None of this reads like a company defending a niche. A bank charter, licences across seven jurisdictions, custody rails through two global banks and now the largest US blockchain patent estate are four different kinds of moat, built in the same few months, around the same stablecoin. Patents rarely move crypto markets the way a listing or a hack does, but they raise the cost of entry for anyone, bank or blockchain-native, who eventually decides $USDC's rails are worth challenging. IBM sold a portfolio it had spent a decade assembling; Circle bought the closest thing regulated stablecoin infrastructure has to a moat still up for sale.