双语阅读｜虚拟货币暴涨引发恐慌
IT IS hard to predict when bubbles will pop, in particular when they are nested within each other. It helps to keep this image in mind when considering one of the biggest surges in asset values of recent years: the market value of all the world’s crypto-currencies has trebled since the beginning of the year, and is now worth more than $60bn (see chart).
泡沫破碎时间很难预测，尤其是在它们彼此互相纠结的情况下。一想到近几年来最大的资产增涨幅，这种情景就会更加深刻：自今年年初，全球所有加密货币的市值都上涨了两倍，目前总价值超过600亿美元。
Bitcoin is the best known of these currencies, especially after hackers this month instructed victims to pay ransoms in the anonymous digital cash in order to get their computer files decrypted. Not that many bitcoins exist: there are about 16.3m of them, with only 1,800 new ones minted every day. But growing demand has pushed bitcoin’s price to a record recent high of about $1,830, up from $450 a year ago.
比特币在加密货币中最为人熟知，尤其在本月黑客要求受害者以这种不记名电子货币的形式支付赎金，以解锁被加密的电脑文件。比特币的数量不是很多：大约有1630万，每天仅新产生1800枚。不过，不断增长的需求将比特币的价格由一年前的450美元，推至1830美元的历史高点。
Problems abide. Earlier this year some of the biggest exchanges, such as Bitfinex, experienced problems with their correspondent banks and were unable to pay out real-world currencies to account-holders. To get their money out, they had to buy bitcoin and exchange them elsewhere. Yet the market is becoming more mature: institutional investors, from family offices to hedge funds, have become more comfortable with crypto-currencies, says Mike Komaransky of Cumberland Mining, which arranges over-the-counter trades. Other factors driving demand include fluctuations of China’s yuan, the French elections and, in a small way, the ransomware attack (when The Economist went to press, only about $80,000 had been sent to the bitcoin accounts held by the hackers).
问题仍在继续。今年早些时候，包括巴比特（Bitfinex）在内的几家最大的交易平台的代理银行出现了问题，无法为客户账户支付真实货币。为了获取资金，他们不得不购买比特币，然后在别处进行交易。坎伯兰矿业公司（Cumberland Mining）负责场外交易的Mike Komaransky表示，市场正变得愈发成熟：机构投资者，从家庭理财中心到对冲基金，对加密货币更加依赖。其他刺激需求的因素包括人民币汇率的浮动，法国大选，以及小规模的勒索软件攻击行为（《经济学人》出版时，黑客所有的比特币账户只收到了约8万美元的赎金）。
Counter-intuitively, bitcoin’s biggest weakness—the system’s limited capacity—has also increased demand for crypto-currencies. Its developers have argued for years about how to expand the system, which can only handle seven transactions per second, compared with thousands on conventional payment services. Even before worries surfaced that the currency could split in two over the disagreement, bitcoin holders started to diversify into some of the many other crypto-currencies, or “alt.coins”, to emerge in recent years. CoinMarketCap, a website, lists more than 800, from ArcticCoin, an obscure Russian currency, to ZCoin, which boasts added privacy. The latest beneficiary is Ripple, which saw its market value explode from $2bn early this month to over $13bn. Ethereum, which issues “ether”, has jumped from $700m in January to $8.6bn.
让人难以预料的是，比特币最大的弱点是系统容量有限，这也刺激了对加密货币的需求。开发者就如何为系统扩容争论了很多年，现在的系统每秒只能处理七笔交易，而传统支付服务每秒能进行几千次交易。甚至在对分歧的担忧出现之前，即货币可以一分为二，比特币持有者开始对其他加密货币或“alt.coins”进行多样化经营，从而在近几年崛起。网站CoinMarketCap列出了800多种数字货币，从鲜为人知的俄罗斯货币ArcticCoin，到拥有隐私保护的ZCoin。最新的受益者是Ripple，其市值从本月初的20亿美元飙升至120亿美元以上。发行ether货币的 Ethereum平台的市值也从1月的7亿美元飙升至86亿美元。
Ethereum’s surge in turn helped inflate another bubble. Feeling richer, holders of ether started investing in what have come to be called initial coin offerings. Startups sell “tokens”, sub-currencies of sorts, which exist on top of Ethereum. A total of 38 such ICOs have already been launched this year, raising more than $150m, according to Smith+Crown, a research firm. This has lured even more money into crypto-currencies. Some of the gains have found their way back into bitcoin and alt.coins. Trading between crypto-currencies has grown tenfold to $2bn on average a day, says Erik Voorhees, the founder of ShapeShift, a crypto-to-crypto exchange.
Ethereum平台市值飙升反过来助长了另一个泡沫。ether货币持有者感觉自己更加富有，于是开始投资所谓的首次代币预售项目。Ethereum平台的首页上有创业公司售卖代币，即各种各样的次级货币的信息 。据研究公司 Smith+Crown的数据显示，今年发起了38个此类首次代币预售项目，筹集的资金超过1.5亿美元。这为加密货币吸引了更多资金。一些收益反过来又会投资比特币和alt.coins。不同种加密货币交易平台 ShapeShift的创始人 Erik Voorhees说道，加密货币之间的交易已经上涨了10倍，平均每天的交易额达到20亿美元。
The question is not if but when the market will turn. Even crypto-aficionados may run for the exits should bitcoin bifurcate or if one of the ICOs, which are completely unregulated, goes badly wrong—if issuers, for example, abscond with the money. Prices will also suffer should regulators start clamping down on such offerings.
问题在于不是数字货币市场是否会反转，而是何时会反转。如果比特币一分为二，或者完全未受监管的首次代币预售项目出现严重问题——例如，发行人携款潜逃，那么即使是加密货币的狂热爱好者都可能会退出。如果监管机构开始严格限制此类预售项目，价格也将受到牵连。
On the other hand, although it is now easy to buy crypto-currencies for real cash, selling big amounts can be hard—as the woes of Bitfinex and others show. This makes sudden outflows unlikely. And the price surges have shown how the crypto-currency system is no longer just about bitcoin. Although it is still the biggest kid on the blockchain and functions, in effect, as a crypto-reserve currency, it now makes up under half the combined market capitalisation of all crypto-currencies. Come a crash, they may not all fall.
另一方面，尽管现在用现金很容易买到加密货币，不过很难出售大量货币，情况正如Bitdinex和其它平台所面临的一样。这使得资金突然流出不太可能。而且价格大幅上涨已经显示出加密货币系统不再局限于比特币。尽管比特币依旧是区块链和函数的最大产物，不过事实上，作为一种加密储存货币，比特币目前在所有加密货币的总市值中占一半以下。如果出现一场危机，它们也许不会全军覆没。
编译：张思莹
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人