China has taken the lead in the number of blockchain patents filed surpassing those filed in the United States of America, reports Hard Fork Data pulled from the World Intellectual Property Organization’s websites has indicated that last year, despite a huge drop in crypto prices, blockchain patents were at their all-time high. As noted by Hard Fork, blockchain patents published in 2018 were in excess of 1000 while those published in 2017 stood at around 971. The data shows that after the birth of Bitcoin in 2008, patents around cryptocurrencies and the technology that underpins them started gaining momentum 4 years ... (full story)