David chaum the founder of the first crypto currency (Digicash) that stirred up lots of reactions way back 1999. After been offered $180 million on his inventory by Microsoft who had plans on installing it on every computer which he turned down even when he didn't have much funds to sponsor the project and didn't even know how to sell his digital currency to the world and when he went bankrupt the idea died. Let's assume Chaum sold his project to Microsoft would it have had similar impact Bitcoin has on the society today. Will the market capitalization be as high as Bitcoin or would it still have failed?. If it had made much progress would Bitcoin have taken the place of been addressed as an altcoin?
Big companies acquire little companies all the time, and just like most companies in genelrall i don't think majority of them are going anywhere. I recon big companies buy them mostly because their own organic growth isn't fast enough and they want to stay relevant and keep speculators interested. At the time of digicash, it was the cutting edge tech and they were really on to something.
Bitcoin succeeded because it was born on the right time and under right circumstances. Right people aquired it just a right amount and right people bought it when it was relatively cheap. If digicash had been succeeded microsoft realized that it would bring a lot of more investors, bringing their own stock value up. So they took a risk, just like with most of their acquisitions.
Writing alternative history for something like that is hard, but i recon that Mircosoft was seen as the "suits", and reason bitcoin succeeded was because it was anti-suits. It was rebellious and anarchist. It seemed to be all the things cyberpunk franchise promised future to be. It was something people really wanted, so it was attractive. Another money from "suits". would never had that kind of effect. Also it would be highly centralized and probably died because it would be forced to something else by regulators.
