Virtual vertigo 虚拟的眩晕

What if the bitcoin bubble bursts? 如果比特币泡沫破裂了怎么办？

Is the latest frenzy like tulipmania, a gold rush or the dotcom boom? 最近的颠狂是像郁金香狂潮，淘金热亦或是互联网繁荣？

Print edition | Leaders

Jun 3rd 2017

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.

市场经常泡沫，但比特币，数字货币的繁荣，是非凡的。尽管它的价格从5月24日的历史最高点2420美元下降了，但是在仅仅两个月的时间里，它的价格已经上涨了一倍多。任何足够聪明或幸运的，已经在7月2010年购买了价值1000美元的比特币的人，当时的价格为0.05美元，现在将会有一个价值4600万美元的价值贮藏。其他由crypto++编写的货币的飙升，也给了他们自己一个约800亿美元的总的市场价值。

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?

如此陡峭的攀升很少是可持续的。更多的时候，“比特币”这个词现在和“泡沫”这个词联系在了一起。但是什么推动了价格这一问题是重要的。这只是一种投机狂热，还是像它的证据所表明的那样，比特币正在采取作为交换媒介或存储价值的更为实质性的角色呢？换言之，比特币是否像郁金香、黄金或美元或者完全就是别的什么东西？

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癫狂，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。许多已经熟悉了比特币投资方式的人已经开始去对赌各种替代品，如以太坊，和“最初货币供应”（ICOS），通过这些，公司可以发行他们自己的数字代币。

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，比特币有真正的用途。他们现在能买的东西从比萨饼到电脑。所以，如果郁金香不是正确的类比，那么黄金呢？比特币似乎承担的不仅仅是一个短暂的相似物。黄金不信任政府和货币印刷的倾向；bitcoinesseurs也是：没有中央银行管理比特币。但价值的存储不应该像这样波动：在攀升到其目前令人目眩的高度前，比特币从2013年底超过$1100到一年后不到$200，既到过合适价位也到过初始价位。

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，而不是只是形式上的数字黄金：成为一个交换工具，如欧元、日元或美元。监管者开始认真对待比特币。一些价格的上涨可以被日本决定对待比特币更像其他任何货币所解释。然而，比特币系统正在它的限制中运行，其开发人员不能就如何增加系统能够处理的交流数量达成一致。因此，交易现在平均花费近4美元，需要花费很多时间来确认。在便捷方面，一美元钞票轻易地击败了它。

Not so dotty

不要如此痴迷

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crypto++编写的货币不像别的什么，那它们是什么？最好的对比可能是与互联网和它在上世纪90年代末创建的互联网热潮。就像互联网，crypto++编写的货币们都体现了创新和产生了更多的自身。对自身来说，他们在实验如何保持公共数据库（“块环链”）没有任何人有不同，用银行的话说，在监管下。例如，佐治亚州正在利用这项技术来确保政府记录（见文章）。块环链是进一步实验的平台。拿以太坊举例。它允许各种项目，从视频游戏到网上市场，通过发行代币筹集资金——这些资金本质上就是私人资金，可以在这些项目中交易和使用。虽然这样子，ICOS需要小心处理，但他们也可以产生有趣的发明。以当下的寡头垄断式的科技巨头为目标，如亚马逊和脸谱网，粉丝们希望他们会产生分散的暴发户。

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.

这似乎是一个产生创新的危险方式。投资者可能会失去他们的衬衫；一个资产类别的崩溃可能会波及到其他人，造成金融体系的动荡。但在crypto++编写的货币这一情况中，这种风险似乎是有限的。很难说那些购买crypto++编写的货币的人没有意识到风险。而且因为它们仍然是一个相当独立的系统，传染是不可能的。

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.

如果有这样一个健康的泡沫，这便是它。可以肯定的是，监管机构应注意crypto++编写的货币不能成为犯罪活动更大的渠道，如毒品交易。但他们应该在形式发展壮大之前三思，尤其是ICOS。太尖锐将不仅仅只是刺破泡沫，也会阻止很多很可能在同一时间出现的有用的创新。

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Virtual vertigo"