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Crypto’s downfall

加密貨幣的災(zāi)難

The collapse of FTX has dealt a catastrophic blow to crypto’s reputation and aspirations. Is this the end?

FTX的崩潰對(duì)加密貨幣的聲譽(yù)和前景造成了災(zāi)難性打擊，該行業(yè)到此為止了嗎？

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1 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.

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失去信任的速度又快又狠。僅僅兩星期前，Sam Bankman-Fried還是業(yè)內(nèi)的風(fēng)云人物。他的加密貨幣交易所FTX，是當(dāng)時(shí)業(yè)內(nèi)第三大交易所，估值為320億美元；他自己的財(cái)富預(yù)計(jì)在160億美元。對(duì)于硅谷的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資家（VC）來說，他是一個(gè)金融天才，可以在玩電子游戲的同時(shí)讓投資者驚嘆，也許他注定要成為世界上第一個(gè)億萬富翁。在華盛頓，他是令人滿意的加密貨幣臉面，與立法者溝通，影響監(jiān)管，為行業(yè)注資。

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2 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.

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今天，除了100萬憤怒的債權(quán)人、幾十家搖搖欲墜的加密貨幣公司、大量監(jiān)管和刑事調(diào)查外，什么都沒有留下。FTX的迅速崩潰，給這個(gè)有著失敗和丑聞歷史的行業(yè)帶來了災(zāi)難性打擊。在此之前，加密貨幣從未顯得如此罪惡、浪費(fèi)和無用。

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3 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.

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關(guān)于FTX倒閉的消息越多，這個(gè)事件就越令人震驚。該交易所的服務(wù)條款聲稱自己不會(huì)將客戶的資產(chǎn)借給其交易部門。然而，據(jù)報(bào)道，在140億美元的資產(chǎn)中，它將80億美元借給了Alameda Research，這是一家同樣由Bankman-Fried先生擁有的交易公司。Alameda Research轉(zhuǎn)而接受自己的數(shù)字代幣作為抵押品，這些數(shù)字代幣是憑空變出來的。交易所的一次致命的擠兌暴露了其資產(chǎn)負(fù)債表的漏洞。最重要的是，在FTX在美國宣布破產(chǎn)后，數(shù)以億計(jì)的美元神秘地從其賬戶中流出。

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4 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.

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大人物、排外貸款、一夜崩盤--這些都是經(jīng)典的金融狂熱素材，從17世紀(jì)荷蘭的郁金香狂熱到18世紀(jì)英國的南海泡沫事件，再到20世紀(jì)初的美國銀行危機(jī)。在去年的加密貨幣高峰期，它的市場價(jià)值從2021年初的近8000億美元飆升至近令人眩暈的3萬億美元。今天，它又回到了8300億美元的水平。

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5 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.

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就像任何狂熱的結(jié)束一樣，現(xiàn)在的問題是，除了騙局和投機(jī)，加密貨幣是否還能用于其他用途。技術(shù)是一種承諾，可以使金融中介機(jī)構(gòu)更快、更便宜、更高效。每一個(gè)新的丑聞的爆發(fā)，都可能嚇跑真正的創(chuàng)新者，縮小行業(yè)規(guī)模。然而，仍然有一個(gè)機(jī)會(huì)，盡管可能性正在減少，但總有一天會(huì)出現(xiàn)一些持久的創(chuàng)新。當(dāng)加密貨幣墜落到地球上時(shí)，這個(gè)微弱的機(jī)會(huì)應(yīng)該被保留下來。

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6 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, opensource 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.

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在過去一周的殘局中，值得被人記住的是加密貨幣的隱含潛力。傳統(tǒng)銀行業(yè)需要龐大的基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施來維持陌生人之間的信任。這是很昂貴的，而且往往由內(nèi)部人士掌握，從中獲利。相比之下，公共區(qū)塊鏈建立在計(jì)算機(jī)網(wǎng)絡(luò)上，使其交易變得透明，理論上它是值得信賴的?；ビ?、開源的功能建立在公共區(qū)塊鏈之上，其中包括自我執(zhí)行的智能合約，以保證系統(tǒng)按規(guī)定運(yùn)行。信物系統(tǒng)和管理規(guī)則，可以共同提供一種激勵(lì)開源貢獻(xiàn)者的巧妙方式。使得在現(xiàn)實(shí)世界中昂貴或不切實(shí)際的安排成為可能--例如，允許藝術(shù)家從售出的數(shù)字作品利潤中保留自己的股份。

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7 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.

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令人失望的是，在比特幣區(qū)塊鏈發(fā)明的14年后，這種承諾幾乎沒有實(shí)現(xiàn)。加密貨幣的狂熱吸引了各路人才，從聰明的畢業(yè)生到華爾街專業(yè)人士，以及來自風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資公司、主權(quán)財(cái)富和養(yǎng)老基金的資本。大量的資金、時(shí)間、人才和精力被用來建立相當(dāng)于虛擬賭場的東西。主流金融體系中已經(jīng)存在更加高效、去中心化的部分，如貨幣交換和借貸。但許多消費(fèi)者害怕失去自己的錢財(cái)，并不信任它們。相反，他們的金錢被用來炒作不穩(wěn)定的代幣。洗錢、逃避制裁和詐騙的人比比皆是。

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8 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.

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面對(duì)這一切，一個(gè)懷疑論者可能會(huì)說，現(xiàn)在是監(jiān)管該行業(yè)的時(shí)候了。但是，一個(gè)資本主義社會(huì)應(yīng)該允許投資者承擔(dān)風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，因?yàn)樗麄冎?，如果賭注惡化，自己會(huì)有損失。即使加密貨幣已經(jīng)崩潰，對(duì)更廣泛的金融系統(tǒng)的影響也是可控的。FTX的資助者包括加州風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資公司紅杉資本、新加坡主權(quán)財(cái)富基金淡馬錫和安大略省教師退休基金會(huì)。所有這些公司都承擔(dān)了虧損，但都沒有造成災(zāi)難性的后果。

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9 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.

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此外，懷疑論者應(yīng)該承認(rèn)，沒有人能夠預(yù)測哪些創(chuàng)新會(huì)開花結(jié)果，哪些不會(huì)。人們應(yīng)該自由地將時(shí)間和金錢投入到核聚變能源、飛艇、元宇宙和其他許多可能永遠(yuǎn)都不會(huì)有好結(jié)果的技術(shù)。加密貨幣也不例外。隨著虛擬經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展，有用的去中心化應(yīng)用可能還會(huì)出現(xiàn)，誰知道呢？底層技術(shù)在不斷改進(jìn)。9月，以太坊區(qū)塊鏈的升級(jí)從根本上降低了其能源消耗，為其高效處理大交易量創(chuàng)造了條件。

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10 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.

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監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)不應(yīng)過度監(jiān)管或取締加密貨幣，而是以兩個(gè)原則為指導(dǎo)。一個(gè)是確保最小化盜竊和欺詐行為的影響，就像任何金融活動(dòng)一樣。另一個(gè)是保持主流金融系統(tǒng)與進(jìn)一步的加密貨幣結(jié)構(gòu)絕緣。雖然區(qū)塊鏈被明確設(shè)計(jì)為可以逃避監(jiān)管的交易方式，但這種設(shè)計(jì)合理化了監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)要成為加密貨幣圈的把關(guān)系統(tǒng)。要求交易所的流動(dòng)資產(chǎn)支持客戶存款是一個(gè)明顯的監(jiān)管步驟。其次是披露幣圈規(guī)則，揭示是否有巨大的和可疑的抵押貸款被提供給交易所自己的交易部門。穩(wěn)定的加密貨幣旨在對(duì)現(xiàn)實(shí)世界的貨幣保持其價(jià)值，它們應(yīng)該像銀行的支付工具一樣受到監(jiān)管。

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Tulip bulb or light bulb?

郁金香球莖還是電燈泡？

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11 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.

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加密貨幣是存活下來，還是成為像郁金香球莖一樣的金融珍品，它的命運(yùn)從根本上并不取決于監(jiān)管。丑聞越多，整個(gè)行業(yè)和它的前景就越有污點(diǎn)。如果投資者和用戶擔(dān)心他們的錢會(huì)憑空消失，那么創(chuàng)新的誘惑就毫無意義。要想讓加密貨幣再次崛起，它必須找到一個(gè)合理的用途，把冒險(xiǎn)精神拋在腦后。