双语阅读｜如果比特币的泡沫破裂呢?
MARKETS frequently froth and bubble, but the boom in bitcoin, a digital currency, is extraordinary. Although its price is down from an all-time high of $2,420 on May 24th, it has more than doubled in just two months. Anyone clever or lucky enough to have bought $1,000 of bitcoins in July 2010, when the price stood at $0.05, would now have a stash worth $46m. Other cryptocurrencies have soared, too, giving them a collective market value of about $80bn.
市场上频繁地出现一些泡沫，但数字货币比特币却异常繁荣。尽管它的价格在从5月24日的历史高点2420美元下跌，但仅仅两个月就翻了一倍多。在2010年7月，如果有人聪明或幸运地买进1000美元的比特币——当时其价格仅为0.05美元，现在就有了价值4600万美元的现金。其他加密货币的价格也大幅飙升，市值达到约800亿美元。
Ascents this steep are rarely sustainable. More often than not, the word “bitcoin” now comes attached to the word “bubble”. But the question of what has driven up the price is important. Is this just a speculative mania, or is it evidence that bitcoin is taking on a more substantial role as a medium of exchange or a store of value? Put another way, is bitcoin like a tulip, gold or the dollar—or is it something else entirely?
如此大幅度的攀升情况很少是可持续的。更多的时候，“比特币”这个词现在和“泡沫”联系在了一起。但是，重要的问题是什么推动了价格。这只是一种投机狂热，还是像它的证据所表明的那样，比特币正在寻求作为交换媒介或存储价值的更为实质性的角色呢？换言之，比特币是否就像郁金香、黄金或美元或者完全就是别的什么东西那样呢？
Start with the case that this is nothing more than a virtual tulipmania, a speculative hysteria in which a rising price encourages ever more buyers, no matter what the asset is. Bitcoin’s recent trajectory certainly seems manic. Retail investors have piled in. Many already familiar with bitcoin investing have moved on to bet on alternatives, such as Ethereum, and “initial coin offerings” (ICOs), in which firms issue digital tokens of their own.
这件事刚开始的时候，这仅仅是一个虚拟的郁金香狂欢，歇斯底里的投机价格上涨鼓励了更多的买家，无论他们持有的是什么样的资产。比特币近期的轨迹明显显得疯狂。散户投资者纷纷涌入。许多熟知比特币投资方式的人开始去对赌各种替代品，如Ethereum，以及“代币发行”，即企业家发行自己的数字代币。
It looks like a scammers’ paradise, yet unlike tulips, bitcoins have real uses. They now buy everything from pizzas to computers. So if a tulip isn’t the right analogue, how about gold? Bitcoins certainly seem to bear more than a passing resemblance. Goldbugs mistrust governments and their money-printing tendencies; so too do bitcoinesseurs: no central bank is in charge of bitcoin. But a store of value should not bounce around as much as this one does: bitcoin swung from more than $1,100 in late 2013 to less than $200 a year later, before climbing, in fits and starts, to its current dizzying heights.
它看起来像一个骗子的天堂，但不像郁金香，比特币有真实的用途。从披萨到电脑，他们现在可以买到任何东西。所以如果郁金香不是恰当的类比，那么黄金呢?比特币似乎并不仅仅只是一个短暂的相似物。黄金投资者不信任政府及其印钞倾向，比特币购买者也如此:没有中央银行负责管理比特币。但价值的存储不应该像这样波动：在以一种合适的方式开始攀升到其目前令人目眩的高度前，比特币从2013年底超过1100美元降低到一年后的不到200美元。
Rather than being just a form of digital gold, bitcoin aspires to loftier goals: to be a means of exchange like the euro, yen or the dollar. Regulators are starting to take bitcoin seriously. Some of the price surge can be explained by Japan’s decision to treat bitcoin more like any other currency. Yet the bitcoin system is operating at its limits and its developers cannot agree on how to increase the number of exchanges the system is able to handle. As a result, a transaction now costs nearly $4 in fees on average and takes many tedious hours to confirm. For convenience, a dollar bill beats it hands down.
比特币渴望更高的目标，不只是形式上的数字黄金：而是成为像欧元、日元或美元那样的交换手段。监管机构开始认真对待比特币。由于其价格飙升，日本决定像对待其他货币一样对待比特币。然而，比特币系统正在极限运营中，其开发者无法就如何增加系统能够处理的交易数量达成一致。结果是，现在的交易平均要花费将近4美元，而且要花很多时间来确认。在便捷方面，一美元钞票能轻而易举打败它。
Not so dotty
不要那么痴迷。
If bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies are unlike anything else, what are they? The best comparison may be with the internet and the dotcom boom it created in the late 1990s. Like the internet, cryptocurrencies both embody innovation and give rise to more of it. They are experiments in themselves of how to maintain a public database (the “blockchain”) without anybody in particular, a bank, say, being in charge. Georgia, for instance, is using the technology to secure government records (see article). And blockchains are platforms for further experiments. Take Ethereum, for example. It allows all kinds of projects, from video games to online markets, to raise funds by issuing tokens—essentially private money that can be traded and used within these projects. Although such ICOs need to be handled with care, they could also generate intriguing inventions. Fans hope that they will give rise to decentralised upstarts taking aim at today’s oligopolistic technology giants, such as Amazon and Facebook.
如果比特币和其他加密货币不是别的东西，那它们是什么？最好的对比可能是互联网和它在上世纪90年代末建立的网络繁荣。与互联网一样，加密货币也体现了创新，并产生了更多的创新。他们在没有任何人（如银行）负责管理的情况下进行关于如何维护一个公共数据库(“区块链”)的实验。例如，格鲁吉亚正在使用这项技术来获取政府记录。区块链是进一步实验的平台。拿以太坊举例。它允许所有类型的项目，从视频游戏到在线市场，通过发行代币来筹集资金——本质上是可以在这些项目中交易和使用私人资金的。虽然这样的代币发行需要小心处理，但它们也可以产生有趣的发明。粉丝们希望，他们将会让分散的暴发户开始对准今天的寡头科技巨头，比如亚马逊和脸书。
This may seem like a dangerous way to generate innovation. Investors could lose their shirts; a crash in one asset class could spread to others, creating wobbles in the financial system. But in the case of cryptocurrencies such risks seem limited. It is hard to argue that those buying cryptocurrencies are unaware of the risks. And since they are still a fairly self-contained system, contagion is unlikely.
这似乎是一种危险的创新方式。投资者可能会输掉他们的内裤；一种在某一资产类别的崩盘可能会蔓延至其他资产类别，造成金融体系的动荡。但在加密货币的情况下，这种风险似乎是有限的。很难说那些购买加密货币的人没有意识到这些风险。由于它们仍然是一个相当独立的系统，因此不太可能蔓延。
If there is such a thing as a healthy bubble, this is it. To be sure, regulators should watch out that cryptocurrencies do not become even more of a conduit for criminal activity, such as drug dealing. But they should think twice before coming down hard, particularly on ICOs. Being too spiky would not just prick a bubble, but also prevent a lot of the useful innovation that is likely to come about at the same time.
如果存在一种健康的泡沫，那就是比特币了。可以肯定的是，监管机构应该注意到，加密货币不会成为像毒品交易这样的犯罪行为的渠道。但他们应该三思而后行，尤其是在代币发行上。过于尖锐不仅会刺破一个泡沫，而且还会阻止许多可能同时出现的有益创新。
编译：吴小丽
审校：肖念
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人