As someone who works in crypto-currency, the enduring mystery over who invented bitcoin bothers me a lot.
The going belief is in a still-anonymous fairy godfather, Satoshi Nakamoto, who gave unto the world his/her/their foundational idea, or intellectual property, and said go forth and multiply.
Just one problem: What if Nakamoto invented his/her/their technology at a company or academic institution? That institution c/would claw back the intellectual property. Where there is intellectual property, there are patent lawyers; and where there are patent lawyers, there are licensing fees! See Oracle v. Google over Sun Microsystems' Java.
What if the reason he/she/it maintains anonymity is because to reveal himself is to reveal where he worked when he invented bitcoin? That employer would be the true owner of the IP, and open-source bitcoin would go private. The foundational idea that's launched a thousand startups, supposedly open-source, turns out to be anything but open-source. That would suck.
I wager that, at some point in the future, bitcoin will be private property owned by a corporation or academic institution.