每天一篇经济学人 | Crypto's downfall 加密货币的终结（202
The fall from grace was hard and fast. Only a fortnight ago Sam Bankman-Fried was in the stratosphere. ftx, his cryptocurrency exchange, then the third-largest, was valued at $32bn; his own wealth was estimated at $16bn. To the gushing venture capitalists (vcs) of Silicon Valley he was the financial genius who could wow investors while playing video games, destined, perhaps, to become the world’s first trillionaire. In Washington he was the acceptable face of crypto, communing with lawmakers and bankrolling efforts to influence its regulation.
堕落的过程是艰难而迅速的。就在两周前，萨姆·班克曼-弗里德还处在风口浪尖。他的加密货币交易所FTX，在当时是第三大交易所，估值为320亿美元; 他自己的财富估计为160亿美元。对于硅谷那些滔滔不绝的风险投资家们来说，他是一个可以一边玩电子游戏一边让投资者惊叹的金融天才，也许注定会成为世界上第一个万亿富翁。在华盛顿，他是受欢迎的加密货币代言人，与立法者沟通，并为影响加密货币的监管的活动提供资金。
Today there is nothing left but 1m furious creditors, dozens of shaky crypto firms and a proliferation of regulatory and criminal probes. The high-speed implosion of ftx has dealt a catastrophic blow to an industry with a history of failure and scandals. Never before has crypto looked so criminal, wasteful and useless.
如今，除了100万愤怒的债权人、数十家摇摇欲坠的加密货币公司和大量的监管和刑事调查外，什么也没有留下。FTX的高速内爆，给这个有着失败和丑闻历史的行业带来了灾难性的打击。加密货币从未像现在这样可耻、损耗大以及无用。
The more that comes out about the demise of ftx, the more shocking the tale becomes. The exchange’s own terms of service said it would not lend customers’ assets to its trading arm. Yet of $14bn of such assets, it had reportedly lent $8bn-worth to Alameda Research, a trading firm also owned by Mr Bankman-Fried. In turn, it accepted as collateral its own digital tokens, which it had conjured out of thin air. A fatal run on the exchange exposed the gaping hole in its balance-sheet. To cap it all, after FTX declared bankruptcy in America, hundreds of millions of dollars mysteriously flowed out of its accounts.
关于FTX失败的消息传出得越多，这个故事就越令人震惊。该交易所自己的服务条款称，它不会将客户的资产借给其交易部门。然而，据报道，在140亿美元的此类资产中，该行向交易公司Alameda Research借出了80亿美元。Alameda Research也是班克曼-弗里德所有。反过来，它接受自己凭空变出的数字代币作为抵押品。交易所的致命挤兑暴露了其资产负债表上的巨大漏洞。更糟糕的是，FTX在美国宣布破产后，数亿美元神秘地从其账户流出。
Big personalities, incestuous loans, overnight collapses—these are the stuff of classic financial manias, from tulip fever in 17th-century Holland to the South Sea Bubble in 18th-century Britain to America’s banking crises in the early 1900s. At its peak last year, the market value of all cryptocurrencies surged to the giddy height of almost $3trn, up from nearly $800bn at the start of 2021. Today it is back at $830bn.
个性张扬、过分亲密的贷款、一夜之间的崩溃——这些都是典型的金融狂热，从17世纪荷兰的郁金香热到18世纪英国的南海泡沫，再到20世纪初美国的银行业危机。在去年的巅峰时期，所有加密货币的市值从2021年初的近8000亿美元飙升至近3万亿美元的令人眩晕的高度。如今，这一数字已回升至8300亿美元。
As at the end of any mania, the question now is whether crypto can ever be useful for anything other than scams and speculation. The promise was of a technology that could make financial intermediation faster, cheaper and more efficient. Each new scandal that erupts makes it more likely that genuine innovators will be frightened off and the industry will dwindle. Yet a chance remains, diminishing though it is, that some lasting innovation will one day emerge. As crypto falls to Earth, that slim chance should be kept alive.
就像任何狂热结束时一样，现在的问题是，除了骗局和投机，加密货币是否还能用于其他用途。当时承诺的是一种能使金融中介更快、更便宜、更高效的技术。每爆发一次新的丑闻，就更有可能吓跑真正的创新者，从而导致行业萎缩。然而，机会仍然存在，尽管正在减少，但终有一天会出现一些持久的创新。随着加密货币落到地球上，这种微弱的机会应该被保留下来。
Amid the wreckage of the past week, it is worth remembering the technology’s underlying potential. Conventional banking requires a vast infrastructure to maintain trust between strangers. This is expensive and is often captured by insiders who take a cut. Public blockchains, by contrast, are built on a network of computers, making their transactions transparent and, in theory, trustworthy. Interoperable, open-source functions can be built on top of them, including self-executing smart contracts that are guaranteed to function as written. A system of tokens, and rules governing them, can collectively offer a clever way to incentivise open-source contributors. And arrangements that would be expensive or impractical to enforce in the real world become possible—allowing artists to retain a stake in the profits from the resale of their digital works, for instance.
在过去一周的混乱中，我们有必要记住这项技术的潜在潜力。传统银行业需要庞大的基础设施来维持陌生人之间的信任。这是昂贵的，而且往往被内部人士抓住，他们会从中抽成。相比之下，公共区块链则建立在计算机网络上，交易透明，理论上是可信的。可互操作的、开源的功能可以构建在它们之上，包括自执行的智能合约，这些合约可以保证按照书面形式运行。一个令牌系统和管理它们的规则可以共同提供一种激励开源贡献者的聪明方法。而那些在现实世界中执行起来很昂贵或不切实际的安排也成为可能——例如，允许艺术家保留转售其数字作品所获利润的部分权益。
The disappointment is that, 14 years after the Bitcoin blockchain was invented, little of this promise has been realised. Crypto’s frenzy drew in talent from bright graduates to Wall Street professionals, and capital from vc firms, sovereign-wealth and pension funds. Vast quantities of money, time, talent and energy have been used to build what amount to virtual casinos. Efficient, decentralised versions of mainstream financial functions, such as currency exchanges and lending, exist. But many consumers, fearful of losing their money, do not trust them. Instead they are used to speculate on unstable tokens. Money-launderers, sanctions-dodgers and scammers abound.
令人失望的是，在比特币区块链发明14年之后，这一承诺几乎没有实现。加密货币的狂热吸引了从聪明的毕业生到华尔街专业人士的人才，以及来自风险投资公司、主权财富和养老基金的资本。大量的金钱、时间、人才和精力被用来建造虚拟赌场。主流金融功能(如货币兑换和贷款)存在高效、分散的版本。但许多消费者担心失去他们的钱，不相信他们。相反，这些钱被投机于不稳定的代币。洗钱者、逃避制裁者和骗子比比皆是。
Presented with all this, a sceptic might say that now is the time to regulate the industry out of existence. But a capitalist society should allow investors to take risks in the knowledge that they will make losses if their bets go sour. Even as crypto has imploded, the spillovers to the wider financial system have been manageable. ftx’s backers included Sequoia, a Californian vc firm; Temasek, a Singaporean sovereign-wealth fund; and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. All have lost money, but none catastrophically.
面对这一切，持怀疑态度的人可能会说，现在是时候对该行业进行监管，使其不复存在了。但资本主义社会应该允许投资者在知道如果赌输就会蒙受损失的情况下冒险。尽管加密货币已经内爆，但其对更广泛金融体系的溢出效应是可控的。FTX的支持者包括加州风投公司红杉资本；新加坡主权财富基金淡马锡；以及安大略教师退休金计划。所有这些公司都亏损了，但没有一个损失惨重。
Moreover, sceptics should acknowledge that nobody can predict which innovations will bear fruit and which will not. People should be free to devote time and money to fusion power, airships, the metaverse and a host of other technologies that may never come good. Crypto is no different. As the virtual economy develops, useful decentralised applications may yet appear—who knows? The underlying technology continues to improve. An upgrade to Ethereum’s blockchain in September radically reduced its energy consumption, paving the way for it to handle high transaction volumes efficiently.
此外，怀疑论者应该承认，没有人能预测哪些创新会结出果实，哪些不会。人们应该可以自由地把时间和金钱投入到核聚变、飞艇、元宇宙和其他许多可能永远不会成功的技术上。加密货币也不例外。随着虚拟经济的发展，有用的去中心化应用可能会出现——谁知道呢? 底层技术在不断改进。9月份以太坊的区块链升级大大降低了其能源消耗，这为高效处理巨额交易铺平了道路。
Instead of over-regulating or stamping out crypto, regulators should be guided by two principles. One is to ensure that theft and fraud are minimised, as with any financial activity. The other is to keep the mainstream financial system insulated from further crypto-ructions. Although blockchains were explicitly designed to escape regulation, these principles justify regulating the institutions that act as gatekeepers for the cryptosphere. Requiring exchanges to back customer deposits with liquid assets is an obvious step. A second is disclosure rules that reveal if, say, a gargantuan and dubiously collateralised loan has been made to the exchange’s own trading arm. Stablecoins, which are meant to hold their value in real-world currency, should be regulated as if they were payment instruments at banks.
监管机构应该遵循两个原则，而不是过度监管或压制加密货币。一个是确保盗窃和欺诈最小化，就像任何金融活动一样。另一个是保持主流金融体系不受加密货币进一步动荡的影响。尽管区块链的设计明确是为了逃避监管，但这些原则证明了监管作为加密领域看门人的机构是合理的。要求交易所用流动资产支持客户存款是显而易见的一步。其二是披露规则，披露是否有一笔巨额且可疑的抵押贷款发放给了交易所自己的交易部门。稳定币旨在以现实货币保持其价值，应该像银行的支付工具一样受到监管。
Tulip bulb or light bulb?
Whether crypto survives, or becomes a financial curiosity like the tulip bulb, will not ultimately depend on regulation. The more scandals ensue, the more the whole enterprise and its aspirations become tainted. The lure of innovation means nothing if investors and users fear their money will disappear into thin air. For crypto to rise again, it must find a valid use that leaves the dodginess behind.
加密货币是能存活下来，还是成为像郁金香球茎一样的金融珍品，最终并不取决于监管。丑闻越多，整个企业及其抱负就越被玷污。如果投资者和用户担心他们的钱会凭空消失，创新的诱惑就毫无意义。加密货币要想再次崛起，就必须找到一个有效的用途，把它的危险性抛在脑后。
