From my article "How to Avoid Funding the American Deep State":

"Regarding how expensive and slow bitcoin transactions have become:

1. The lead maintainer of the Bitcoin Core repository on GitHub, Wladimir van der Laan, works for the Digital Currency Initiative (as do Cory Fields and Gavin Andresen, who, however, hasn't contributed to Bitcoin Core since 2016, as far as I know). The DCI's current director is Neha Narula, who was a senior software engineer at Google. She's not the only one at the DCI who has a funny background.

2. The DCI was co-founded by Brian Forde at the MIT Media Lab. Forde is a former White House senior advisor. And MIT Media Lab's director, Joi Ito, is a strategic advisor to Sony and a board member of the New York Times Company (among other things). Then there is of course the fact that the MIT receives hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government every year.

3. In 2016, AXA Strategic Ventures co-lead a $55 million investment in a key funder of Bitcoin Core: Blockstream, for which quite a few Bitcoin Core developers have worked. At the time of the investment, AXA's CEO and chairman was Henri de Castries, who is also the chairman of the Bilderberg Group's Steering Committee."