Fortune reported that Circle, the issuer of stablecoin USDC, acquired over 1,000 blockchain-related patents from IBM, and critical predictions have been raised that this deal could be poisonous for the entire virtual asset ecosystem. Fortune questioned the effectiveness of IBM's patents and pointed out that IBM's past venture into enterprise blockchain business effectively ended in failure. It also warned of the risk that Circle might file patent infringement lawsuits against competitors or nascent startups or demand license fees based on the intellectual property (IP) it has secured.
