You have probably heard of Satoshi Nakamoto, the the mystery man, woman, or group that started it all. This is because Satoshi Nakamoto’s claim to fame revolves around the original 8-page Bitcoin whitepaper, which you can read here:
https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper
What we have to ask ourselves, are who are the programmers that started it all? Who was paying them? If you were a programmer being paid, there would be a tendency to implement the ideas of whoever was providing funding. As far as I am aware at this point, the development was open source on Github, and advantages of an open source development is that there is a threshold of consensus needed. Ideally this would mean that because changes to the Bitcoin software protocol would have require a general consensus, that only good ideas that are healthy for the future of Bitcoin would be implemented. The reality is, this would be an assumption as best, as not all of the programmers are purely interested in the success and wide adoption of Bitcoin.
One of these players early on is Blockstream. Blockstream is a company founded in 2014 involved in the development of Bitcoin from the early days. There is some speculation about ties with investors from Mastercard, which brings to question whether or not such an investor would seek to push Bitcoin development in a direction that conflicts with the idea of decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash. Some say that Blockchain seeks to siphon off the Bitcoin blockchain by forming corporate partnerships and creating multiple sidechains as a revenue source, by charging transaction fees on those sidechains. You can find their whitepaper on sidechains here: