2018.01.16 这是比特币泡沫结束的开始吗？

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BUSINESS
Is This the Beginning of the End of the Bitcoin Bubble?
The cryptocurrency was meant to be stateless and leaderless. Ironically, the culprits of its latest plunge are ... state leaders.

By Derek Thompson

Dado Ruvic / Reuters
JANUARY 16, 2018
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Bitcoin is a bubble.

That much was clear to economists, investors, and analysts for quite some time. But one of the shortcomings of such analysis is that certainty of an economic bubble offers little insight on how, when, or why that bubble will pop. “I can say almost with certainty that they will come to a bad ending,” Warren Buffett said last week, to the great consternation of crypto fans. “When it happens or how or anything else, I don't know.”

Maybe—maybe—it’s finally happening.

The price of bitcoin plummeted by as much as 20 percent on Tuesday to $12,000, or about 40 percent below its all-time high in December. Other popular cryptocurrencies, like ethereum and Ripple, also posted double-digit losses.

What’s the reason? With stock-market analysis, there is sometimes an instinct to invent causality (“stocks fall on X,” “stocks slide amid Y”) when markets are driven by a matrix of inextricable factors. But in this case, the cause of bitcoin’s collapse seems pretty clear. Just as the currency’s hysterical price rise was driven in large part by demand out of China, Japan, and South Korea, its latest fall seems similarly tied to developments in Asia.

South Korean Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon said the government is considering shutting down cryptocurrency exchanges, or at least introducing new regulations to the nascent crypto market. The Chinese government is also cracking down on bitcoin and other tokens, not only because citizens can use them for laundering money and evading capital controls, but also because the computer power required to process transactions and create new tokens—which is often called “mining”—is extraordinary intensive. The global bitcoin market uses more energy than the nation of Denmark, according to one analysis.

Bitcoin’s price rises and falls like a plastic bag in a hurricane, so it’s silly to attach too much significance to one day’s fluctuation. But today’s news still reveals a subtle crack in the bull case for bitcoin. The digital currency was designed to be stateless and leaderless—“rules without rulers”—to evade single points of failure, and to remain impervious to government control. But the great irony is that bitcoin is plunging today in part because it’s failing on all three accounts.

First, bitcoin is designed so that digital transactions are approved by a network of computers rather than sanctioned by a single government. But its price is so volatile in part because its ownership is quite consolidated. Approximately 40 percent of bitcoin is held by about 1,000 users, and the top 100 bitcoin addresses—some of which may belong to the same person—control about one-sixth of all the issued currency, according to Bloomberg. One reason why bitcoin can fall by 20 percent in a day—which is practically unheard of for most equities, and certainly of most currencies—is that if any one of these huge investors sells, it can move the market. Bitcoin’s extraordinary price fluctuation is possible because ownership of nominally decentralized technology is, in fact, quite concentrated.

Second, bitcoin exchanges—online marketplaces where bitcoins are held and traded—are all potential points of failure. And they fail, all the time. In 2014 thousands of bitcoins were stolen from Mt. Gox, an exchange based in Tokyo. In 2016, bitcoin plunged after an exchange in Hong Kong said it had been hacked. Today, bitcoin plummeted again when several governments threatened to regulate or shut down exchanges based in Asia.

Third, while the cryptocurrency was designed to be stateless and leaderless, state leaders are largely responsible for its latest plunge. The currency requires no central bank, as new tokens are issued by computers running bitcoin software. But bitcoin’s fortunes are still tied to the decision-making of central banks and other government regulators. In late 2013, after several senators praised bitcoin and other virtual currencies at an official hearing as “legitimate financial services,” the value of bitcoin tripled within the month to $900. But government rulemaking giveth and taketh away. On Tuesday, bitcoin’s value fell after a Chinese central bank official reportedly said that the government should ban the trading of digital currencies. Perhaps that’s the most ironic thing about bitcoin: A system designed to distribute value away from individual authorities is exquisitely sensitive to mere rumors about individual regulators.


An asset becomes a bubble when fundamentals yield to FOMO—a “a fear of missing out” on the action. But bitcoin’s FOMO bubble is popping, even as economic fundamentals charge forward. Look at the countries most responsible for bitcoin’s collapse. Both commodity demand and state-enterprise profit in China have reached record highs. Korean stocks have grown by more than 20 percent in the last 12 months, while Japan’s Nikkei Index has popped, growing from about 23,000 to about 24,000 in the last four weeks. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the stock market just screamed past 26,000 for the first time in history. Blockchain might be the technology of the future. But it has practically nothing at all to do with the economy of the present.

Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the Work in Progress newsletter.




这是比特币泡沫结束的开始吗？
加密货币本应是无国家、无领导的。具有讽刺意味的是，其最新暴跌的罪魁祸首是......国家领导人。

德里克-汤普森报道

Dado Ruvic / 路透社
2018年1月16日

比特币是一个泡沫。

经济学家、投资者和分析师在相当长的一段时间内都清楚这一点。但是这种分析的缺点之一是，对经济泡沫的确定性几乎没有提供关于该泡沫如何、何时或为何会破裂的洞察力。"我几乎可以肯定地说，它们会走到一个糟糕的结局，"沃伦-巴菲特上周说，让加密货币的粉丝们大为惊愕。"何时发生、如何发生或其他什么，我都不知道。"

也许--也许--它终于发生了。

比特币的价格在周二暴跌了20%之多，至12,000美元，或比12月的历史高点低约40%。其他流行的加密货币，如以太坊和瑞波币，也公布了两位数的损失。

原因何在？在股市分析中，当市场由一系列不可分割的因素驱动时，有时会有一种编造因果关系的本能（"股票在X上下跌"，"股票在Y中下滑"）。但在这种情况下，比特币崩溃的原因似乎很清楚。正如该货币歇斯底里的价格上涨在很大程度上是由中国、日本和韩国的需求推动的，它最近的下跌似乎也与亚洲的发展有类似的联系。

韩国财政部长Kim Dong-yeon表示，政府正在考虑关闭加密货币交易所，或者至少为新生的加密货币市场引入新的法规。中国政府也在打击比特币和其他代币，这不仅是因为公民可以用它们来洗钱和逃避资本管制，而且还因为处理交易和创建新代币所需的计算机功率--这通常被称为 "采矿"--是非常密集的。根据一项分析，全球比特币市场使用的能源比丹麦国家还多。

比特币的价格涨跌就像飓风中的塑料袋，所以把一天的波动看得太重是愚蠢的。但今天的新闻仍然揭示了比特币的牛市案例中的一个微妙的漏洞。数字货币被设计成无国籍和无领导--"没有统治者的规则"--以避免单点故障，并保持不受政府控制。但极具讽刺意味的是，比特币今天的暴跌部分是因为它在这三个方面都失败了。

首先，比特币的设计是让数字交易由一个计算机网络批准，而不是由一个政府批准。但它的价格如此不稳定，部分原因是它的所有权是相当巩固的。据彭博社报道，大约40%的比特币由大约1000名用户持有，而前100个比特币地址--其中一些可能属于同一个人--控制着所有发行货币的六分之一。为什么比特币可以在一天内下跌20%--这对大多数股票来说几乎是闻所未闻的，当然对大多数货币来说也是如此--的一个原因是，如果这些巨大的投资者中的任何一个卖出，都会影响市场。比特币的超常价格波动是可能的，因为对名义上的分散技术的所有权实际上是相当集中的。

第二，比特币交易所--持有和交易比特币的在线市场--都是潜在的故障点。而且，他们一直在失败。2014年，数以千计的比特币从东京的Mt.Gox交易所被盗。2016年，在香港的一家交易所说它被黑了之后，比特币暴跌。今天，当几个政府威胁要监管或关闭设在亚洲的交易所时，比特币再次暴跌。

第三，虽然加密货币被设计为无国籍和无领导，但国家领导人对其最近的暴跌负有很大责任。这种货币不需要中央银行，因为新的代币是由运行比特币软件的计算机发行的。但比特币的命运仍然与中央银行和其他政府监管机构的决策息息相关。2013年底，在几位参议员在一次官方听证会上称赞比特币和其他虚拟货币是 "合法的金融服务 "之后，比特币的价值在一个月内增长了两倍，达到900美元。但政府的规则制定是有得有失的。周二，据报道，在一位中国央行官员说政府应该禁止数字货币的交易后，比特币的价值下跌。也许这是关于比特币最具有讽刺意味的事情：一个旨在将价值从个别当局手中分配出去的系统，对关于个别监管者的简单传言非常敏感。


当基本面屈服于FOMO--一种 "害怕错过 "的行动时，一种资产就变成了泡沫。但是比特币的FOMO泡沫正在破灭，即使经济基本面在向前发展。看看那些对比特币的崩溃负有最大责任的国家。中国的商品需求和国有企业利润都达到了历史最高点。韩国股市在过去12个月里增长了20%以上，而日本的日经指数已经爆涨，在过去四周里从约23000点增长到约24000点。与此同时，在美国，股市刚刚尖叫着突破26000点，这是历史上第一次。区块链可能是未来的技术。但它与当前的经济几乎没有任何关系。

德里克-汤普森(Derek Thompson)是《大西洋》杂志的工作人员，也是《工作进展》通讯的作者。