As long as Bitcoin stays open source and voluntary, I don't see a problem of anybody funding its development even if it's a CIA or JPMorgan. What we should fight for is to have an open market for alternative currencies.
Cryptocurrency is best served as a natural monopoly. Bitcoin will likely be the only popular cryptocurrency. It's not a like it or leave it type of thing. We do no not need it controlled by the government or the largest bank.
It doesn't have to be a monopoly.
If we look at gold, for example, one might argue that it was a natural monopoly on money, but I would argue that silver (even though less valuable) served as money as well.
And we already have "silver" to Bitcoin's "gold" - it's called Litecoin.
Once the "current" coin (Bitcoin at the moment) moves to a specialized mining hardware like ASICs the general purpose hardware becomes available for the next experiment (currently Litecoin). The same shift will likely happen again when Litecoin ASICs show up at some point in the future.
Litecoin brings faster blocks and as a result higher overall network throughput (due to 1Mb per block limit) before hard fork is required. It also will adopt important blockchain optimizatons earlier in its evolution and will likely have more equal coin distribution than Bitcoin due to increased community awareness when it was started. I'm sure there will be other successful coins as well.
Adoption wise, it would take one or two major payment processors like Bit-Pay to take any alt-coin on board to make all the difference.
I'm going to stick with Bitcoin and defend it until death for the interests of those who want a protocol that can't be easily changed. I am not going to Litecoins, Cosbycoins or Free Speech Zone Coins.
Thanks.