These stories and many more were covered in this week's daily editions of Bitcoin in Brief.

Snatching Blockchain, Tracking Bitcoin

On Monday we reported that online retail giant, Amazon, has obtained a bitcoin tracking patent. The company thinks that by collecting data from multiple sources and finding a correlation with transactions it can link a specific bitcoin address with a shipping address, an IP, an email, a bank account, or a social media profile. And the patent specifically notes that police forces may be interested in receiving such data.

Meanwhile, Amazon's main brick-and-mortar competitor, Walmart, has gotten its own blockchain patents. The company plans a vendor payment sharing system that will automatically process payments for products and services, and encrypt the transactions on a blockchain.