比特幣魔力消退的諷刺 Bitcoin's magic begins to wear off投資集團
Bitcoin, the decentralised, mainly digital currency that is neither issued nor guaranteed by central banks, has always seemed like a magic trick. Rather than spinning straw into gold it transforms wasted computing power into money that people will actually accept as payment.
比特幣(Bitcoin)——一種既非各國央行發行、也不受其擔保的分散化、（主要）數字化的貨幣——一直像是某種魔術手法。不同於將稻草變成黃金，比特幣將多餘的運算能力轉換成人們將接受作爲支付方式的金錢。
Radical libertarians have desperately wanted to believe in it because they hope it can resolve the following dilemma. They prefer markets to politics and they violently distrust states. But modern states in effect have a monopoly over the currencies that markets need in order to work.
激進的自由意志主義者曾迫切希望信任比特幣，因爲他們希望這種貨幣能夠解決以下的兩難困境。他們喜歡市場多於政治，而且對國家懷有強烈的不信任感。但現代國家實際上壟斷了市場發揮作用所需要的貨幣。
Bitcoin, if it became broadly accepted, would challenge states’ dominance of the economy. It is designed to prevent monopoly by states or other entities, building a new currency based on shared information and making it hard for any entity to gain control. Politics disappears and a combination of technology and cryptographic proofs is conjured up in its place.
如果能被廣泛接受，比特幣將挑戰國家對經濟的主導地位。比特幣從設計上防止國家或其他實體進行壟斷，而是打造一種基於共享信息的新貨幣，使任何實體都難以獲得對它的控制權。政治消失了，被一種想象出來的技術與加密檢驗的結合取而代之。
Unfortunately, the magic is wearing off. Some of the technological innovations associated with bitcoin will stick around. The political project will not. Rather than overcoming conventional politics, bitcoin is succumbing to it.
可惜，這種魔力正在逐漸消退。與比特幣相關的一些技術創新將保留下來。其政治設想則不會。比特幣非但沒有克服常規政治，反而正在屈從於後者。
The biggest fights are focused on the most innovative element of bitcoin: the “blockchain”. This is a decentralised ledger of transactions using bitcoin. Bitcoin “miners” compete with one another to solve computationally hard problems. The winner receives new bitcoin but also validates a “block” of queued transactions, which is then added to the ledger and shared with the community.
最大的爭執集中在比特幣最具創新性的元素：“區塊鏈”(blockchain)——一個記錄比特幣交易的分散化的賬本。比特幣“礦工們”通過互相競爭來破解計算難度極大的問題。優勝者將獲得新的比特幣，同時還驗證一個等候交易的“區塊”，後者隨後被添加進賬本，並與整個社區共享。
This system was designed to replace third-party regulation with decentralised authority. For technical reasons, it is starting to fail. Each block is small, meaning the system can handle only a few transactions at a time. As more people have started to use bitcoin, the system has grown more unreliable.
這一系統旨在用分散化的職權來取代第三方監管。由於技術原因，它正在開始失靈。每個區塊都很小，意味着系統每次只能處理幾筆交易。隨着更多人開始使用比特幣，系統變得越來越不可靠。
The problem is that coming up with a fix requires political agreement. Because there is no centralised authority within bitcoin, there is no one who can impose a mandate. Bitcoin’s creator, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, apparently vanished years ago, leaving big decisions to an increasingly quarrelsome community.
問題在於，形成解決方案需要達成政治協議。比特幣內部沒有中央權威，因此，沒人可以強加授權。化名“中本聰”(Satoshi Nakamoto)的比特幣發明者似乎多年前已經消失，留下一個日益爭吵不休的社區來討論重大決定。
Some influential members of the bitcoin network want to change the currency’s protocols to make the blocks bigger so that more bitcoin are released at one time, speeding up transactions. Others have responded with outrage, claiming that this would destroy bitcoin. A fundamental change to the protocol would “fork the chain”, potentially creating two different currencies with irreconcilable records, one for those who embraced the fix and another for those who refused it.
一些有影響力的比特幣網絡成員想修改比特幣協議，讓區塊變得更大，以便每次可以釋放出更多比特幣，加快交易速度。其他人則用憤怒迴應，稱這樣做將摧毀比特幣。從根本上改變比特幣協議將“形成鏈的分叉”，潛在創造出兩種不能核賬的不同貨幣：一種是接受修改協議的人想要的，另一種是反對修改協議的人想要的。
Others want instead to move crucial parts of transaction handling away from the block chain, relying more on “side chains”. Again, this idea is disputed: side chains could turn bitcoin’s unified approach into a stew of quasi-compatible proprietary solutions.
其他人則想將交易處理的關鍵部分移出區塊鏈，更多地依靠“側鏈”(side chains)。這種構想也引發爭議：側鏈可能把比特幣的統一方法變成一堆準兼容的專有解決方案。
The leading proposal to fork the chain would require 75 per cent of the bitcoin network to agree to the proposal before it was fully implemented. However, no one is empowered to stop people from swaying opinion in illegitimate ways. Companies that favour changing the protocol, such as Coinbase, a bitcoin “wallet” and exchange business, have been targeted by distributed denial of service attacks intended to knock their servers off the internet. People on both sides have withdrawn from the bitcoin network after receiving threats.
形成鏈分叉的主要提議要求獲得75%的比特幣網絡同意，才能全面實施。然而，沒人擁有權力阻止人們以不正當的方式影響觀點。從事比特幣“錢包”及交換業務的Coinbase等支持修改協議的公司，已遭受分佈式拒絕服務攻擊，其目的是把他們的服務器踢出互聯網。在遭到威脅後，雙方都有人退出比特幣網絡。
This free-for-all demonstrates the main problem of technological libertarianism. It does not escape politics but temporarily displaces and conceals it. As bitcoin has become more successful, it has also become potentially more lucrative. Ideology is giving way to fights over who gets what. And it turns out that libertarians are not very good at figuring out how to resolve these political clashes.
這種混亂展現了技術自由意志主義的主要問題。它無法逃避政治，只是暫時取代並隱藏了政治。隨着比特幣變得越來越成功，它也變得潛在更有利可圖。意識形態讓位於圍繞誰該得到什麼的爭執。事實證明，自由意志主義者並不擅長琢磨出如何解決此類政治衝突。
As these fights become more publicly visible, they will hurt bitcoin outside its core base of enthusiasts. The advocates of bitcoin got one thing absolutely right. Money is a confidence trick, a form of “frozen desire”, as the writer James Buchan describes it. We only believe in it because everyone else believes in it. So if bitcoin believers believed hard enough, and convinced other people to believe, they had a shot at making it generally accepted.
隨着這些爭執日益公開，他們將在覈心愛好者之外損害比特幣。比特幣的倡導者在一個問題上完全正確。貨幣是某種信心詭計，正如作家詹姆斯•巴肯(James Buchan)所描述的，它是一種“被凍結的慾望”。我們相信它，只是因爲所有人都相信它。因此，如果比特幣的信奉者對比特幣足夠信任，並能說服別人也信任，他們就有機會讓比特幣得到公認。
That is now going to be far harder. The apparent value of bitcoin depends on a suspension of disbelief. It is hard to see how the illusion can work when the magicians are punching each other out on stage.
如今這一點已困難得多。比特幣貌似具有的價值取決於人們擱置對其的懷疑。當魔術師們在舞臺上相互扭打時，很難看到這種幻覺能起作用。
