Quote from a well-known paper: "My thanks to Jerome Barkow, Andrew Odlyzko, Bruce Smith, K. Eric Drexler, Markus Krummenacker, Mark Wiley, Norm Hardy, and others for their insightful comments."
Search those guys (plus the author & former companies); Search Sun Microsystems, look for a patent from 1995 that a Norm et al of these guys (+mark miller worked on); search Agorics Inc.; ta da - you got a crew that may (and easily could) have roguely created an open source money (in opposition to and to undercut patents in the pipeline).
One thing that is curious is the presence of nanotech folks close to ns + his work at JPL + foresight institute. These guys were preparing for humanity to get off the rock, as they say, and to ensure stores of value could travel w/ them.
EDIT - From
http://cap-lore.com/Agorics/Library/patent.html:
"Agorics employees authored the following patents. They are fundamental to the implementation of secure, electronic business applications and secure Web servers. Agorics, Inc., either owns or has license rights to each of these patents.
Patent: # US 4,584,639: Computer Security System
Status: Filed December 23, 1983; Granted: April 22, 1986.
Licensed to Agorics by Key Logic, Inc.
Patent: # US 5,640,569: Diverse Goods Arbitration System and Method for Allocating Resources In a Distributed Computer System
Status: Filed April 28, 1995; Granted: June 17, 1997.
Licensed to Agorics by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Patent: # US 5,781,633: Capability Security for Transparent Distributed Object Systems
Status: Filed July 1, 1996; Granted: July 14, 1998.
Licensed to Agorics by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Patent: # US 5,790,669: Lightweight Non-Repudiation System and Method
Status: Filed July 1, 1996; Granted: August 4, 1998.
Licensed to Agorics by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Patent: # US 5,852,666: Capability Security for Distributed Object Systems
Status: Filed July 1, 1996; Granted: December 22, 1998.
Licensed to Agorics by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Patent: # US 5,960,087: Distributed Garbage Collection System & Method
Status: Filed July 1, 1996; Granted: September 28, 1999.
Licensed to Agorics by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Patent: # US 6,049,838: Persistent Distributed Capabilities
Status: Filed July 1, 1996; Granted: April 1l, 2000.
Licensed to Agorics by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Patent: # US 6,161,121: Generic Transfer of Exclusive Rights
Status: Filed July 1, 1996; Granted: December 12, 2000.
Licensed to Agorics by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Agorics' personnel are also among the authors of the following patents for the FSTC (Financial Services Technology Consortium):
Patent: # US 6,021,202: Method and System for Processing Electronic Documents
Status: Dec. 19, 1997; Granted: Feb. 1, 2000.
Patent: # US 6,209,095: Method and System for Processing Electronic Documents
Status: Filed: Aug. 31, 1999; Granted: Mar. 27, 2001."
Also:
http://www.cap-lore.com/Agorics/Library/dsr.html ("To appear in Agoric Systems: Market Based Computation, edited by Wm. Tulloh, Mark S. Miller and Don Lavoie. This may be found by ftp at netcom.com:pub/joule/DSR1.ps.gz, DSR1.rtf.gz or DSR.txt") (recall a netcom.com email address).