ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,602,673, issued on April 14, was assigned to Arx Research Inc. (New York).
"Trustless physical cryptocurrency" was invented by Charles Cameron Robertson (Palo Alto, Calif.), Tilman Heiner Drerup (Palo Alto, Calif.), Paul Michael Gerhardt (Oakland, Calif.) and David Joshua Myers (Oakland, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A physical cryptocurrency may comprise a physical medium and an attached processor. The processor may generate a public-private key pair, or the public-private key pair may be generated in a secure and auditable manner external to the processor and stored on the processor. The private key may enable execution of a s...