One theory is that Walter Wriston of Citi paid for a team to develop bitcoin, but he passed away and they completed the project in the next two years. He was thinking and talking about cryptocurrency for many years before that.

BTW, your posts like the one above, and this comment, are why you are one of my witnesses :)

Before, people couldn't organize because they had to pay to organize. Cost to do so exceeded the resources of most; they didn't organize. A small predatory minority which was organized could easily push them around. Today, cryptos pay people to organize; and when millions of people are paid to organize, they organize. An organized mass cannot be pushed around. That's why China and others are so fearful of decentralized blockchains. For example, the common rewards pool in Steem pushes people to organize, because they get paid for doing so, if they cash out.