MasterCard wants to make electronic payments anonymous… with blockchain

Just as the US Department of Homeland Security announced plans to develop forensic techniques to deanonymize cryptocurrency transactions, MasterCard has thrown a spanner in the works with plans for the exact opposite. According to a recent patent application, the payment infrastructure provider wants to anonymize “electronic transactions via blockchain.” The patent explains how the system would obscure the origin and amount of funds involved in a given transaction. MasterCard‘