What Explains Bitcoin’s Latest Boom?
如何解释近期比特币的暴涨？
The first surge in the price of bitcoin, to around $1,000 in 2013, minted cryptocurrency millionaires, provoked declarations of a bubble and left some early fans kicking themselves.
比特币的首次暴涨是在2013年，当时价格一度飙升至1000美元左右，由此造就了一批加密货币百万富翁，引发了有关比特币是泡沫的说法，也让一些早期的比特币玩家后悔不已。
One unlucky man in Wales searched a rubbish dump for a hard drive containing 7,500 accidentally discarded bitcoins, whose value had grown from almost nothing to $7.5m. Since then bitcoin has been on a wild ride.
威尔士的一个倒霉蛋在垃圾堆里翻找着一个被他不小心丢掉的硬盘，硬盘里保存着7500个比特币，这些比特币的价值从几乎一文不值增长至近750万美元。自那以后，比特币如同坐上了过山车一般。
Fuelled by casual speculators and market manipulation, its price surged to about $19,000 in December 2017; over the next year it fell by more than four-fifths. Bitcoin’s most recent ascent has been its giddiest yet. Having tripled in three months its price is now over $35,000 and somewhere under Newport sits a computer part worth over $260m.
在散户和机构的推动下，比特币的价格于2017年12月飙升至约1.9万美元；但在接下来的一年里又暴跌超过80%。近日来，比特币的上涨尤为迅猛。其价格在三个月内增长了两倍，现已超过3.5万美元，而遗失在威尔士纽波特市的那块硬盘如今的价值已超2.6亿美元。
Today’s bitcoin enthusiasm is striking because basement-dwelling libertarians are not the only ones talking it up. Some of Wall Street’s finest have joined them. Larry Fink of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said in December that bitcoin could become a “global market”.
如今，比特币可谓是异常火爆，因为不仅仅是那些自由主义者在鼓吹比特币，就连一些华尔街精英也加入了他们的行列。全球最大资产管理公司贝莱德集团的拉里·芬克去年12月表示，比特币或将成为一种“全球性货币”。
Big hedge funds such as Renaissance Technologies have been punting on cryptocurrencies. Ruchir Sharma, a strategist at Morgan Stanley’s investment arm, argues that America’s mounting debts may make cryptocurrencies more appealing.
复兴科技等大型对冲基金也一直在向加密货币下注。摩根士丹利投资部门策略师鲁奇尔·夏尔马认为，美国不断增长的债务可能会使加密货币更具吸引力。
The total value of outstanding bitcoins exceeds that of Canadian dollars, narrowly defined to include banknotes and central-bank reserves. But few of the new crypto converts think it has any chance of replacing government money – the dream of early believers.
现有可供交易的比特币总值已经超过了加拿大元（仅限纸币和央行储备）。但在新晋比特币投资者中，很少有人会像早期信徒那样，认为比特币终将取代由各国政府发行的法定货币。
It is far too inefficient to be of much use for making payments; bitcoin is capable of processing fewer than ten transactions per second. By contrast, the firms upending consumer finance, like Alipay and Venmo, minimise friction. Were that problem solved, governments would clamp down quickly on any technology that threatened their monetary sovereignty.
比特币太过低效，其每秒仅能处理不到10笔交易。相比之下，支付宝和Venmo等颠覆消费金融模式的公司却能将效率最大化。如果加密货币能够解决这一问题，那么各国政府将会迅速取缔任何能威胁到其货币主权的技术。
Regulatory resistance has already forced Facebook’s mooted digital currency, Libra, to rebrand (to “Diem”) and scale back its early ambition. Meanwhile, the competition is heating up as central banks improve payments systems and launch slick digital currencies of their own.
监管上的阻力已经迫使脸书将其计划推出的数字货币Libra更名为Diem，并且也不再有当初那般雄心壮志了。与此同时，随着各国央行改进了支付系统并推出了紧跟时代的官方数字货币，竞争正在变得越来越激烈。
Bitcoin mania is instead rooted in the possibility that it might eventually offer a safe store of value – like gold, but more convenient (because it is easier to maintain a digital wallet than a physical vault). Then it could win a small but permanent slice of investors’ portfolios.
比特币如此火热的根源在于，它最终或将成为一种安全的价值储存介质，如同黄金一般，但比黄金更方便（相比现实中的金库，数字钱包更易维护）。这样一来，它将成为投资者投资组合中一小部分、但永远存在的份额。
Like bitcoin, gold pays no interest or dividend. Unlike bitcoin, gold has fundamental uses, but it is fluctuating demand from investors for the yellow metal, not jewellers and chipmakers, that drives prices. It is therefore conceivable that bitcoin’s high price could also prove self-sustaining.
和比特币一样，黄金没有利息和股息。不同于比特币的是，黄金有其基本用途，但驱动金价的是投资者对黄金需求的波动，而非珠宝商或芯片制造商。因此，我们可以想象，比特币的高价或许也是自我维持的。
If bitcoin became as popular with investors as gold (measured by the market value of their positions) the price would rise to $146,000, calculates JPMorgan, a bank. Already, millennial investors appear to prefer cryptocurrencies to bullion.
据摩根大通估计，如果比特币像黄金一样受到投资者的追捧（以投资者持仓市值来衡量），其价格将升至14.6万美元。而相比黄金，如今千禧一代的投资者似乎更热衷于投资加密货币。
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