Bullish Analyst Tom Lee: Mastercard’s New Crypto Moves Show Huge Financial Players Are Jumping In

Tom Lee says Mastercard’s interest in capitalizing on cryptocurrency shows big money is ready to back the emerging technology.

“It’s really validating the idea that digital money, or blockchain-based money, is a valid form of transaction,” the head of research at Fundstrat told CNBC’s Fast Money.

Mastercard won a patent on Tuesday designed to increase the utility of cryptocurrency by integrating existing fiat payment systems with crypto, allowing customers to spend cryptocurrency instantly while the actual transfer happens on the blockchain behind the scenes.

Here’s how the patent explains the opportunity at hand:

“Existing payment networks and payment processing systems that utilize fiat currency are specially designed and configured to safely store and protect consumer and merchant information and credentials and to transmit sensitive data between computing systems. In addition, existing payment systems are often configured to perform complex calculations, risk assessments, and fraud algorithm applications extremely fast, as to ensure quick processing of fiat currency transactions. Accordingly, the use of traditional payment networks and payment systems technologies in combination with blockchain currencies may provide consumers and merchants the benefits of the decentralized blockchain while still maintaining security of account information and provide a strong defense against fraud and theft.”

Lee says we can look to other countries to read the tea leaves on where cryptocurrency is heading, pointing out that Japan has “really taken a much more positive view on digital money or blockchain-based money being real transactions.”

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