Do you guys think that Patents will be as important in BitCoin industry as in other high tech industries?

I have recently published a report on patenting within the BitCoin and cryptocurrency technology industries.  I analyzed patenting trends within the cryptocurrenty industry to get a better understanding of the players represented and their relative levels of investment.  Specifically, I have searched for all US granted patents, pending applications, and international applications containing the word "bitcoin", "cryptocurrency" or "cryptographic currency".  My search returned 65 results which seems really low.

Visa was found to be the owner of the most BitCoin and cryptocurrency related patents where as MasterCard, PayPal, and Amazon don't own any.  Any theories on why that is?  They may be dabbling in cryptocurrency technologies but don't seem to be protecting their innovations.  If I were an investor in one of these companies, I might be worried that these titans of payments and commerce will be late to the BitCoin game.

I wrote up my findings in this short blog post: http://www.preferredembodiment.com/1/post/2014/03/whos-patenting-bitcoin-technologies-and-whos-not.html