2015年比特币有望迅猛发展

    对比特币投资者而言，新一年的开头并不吉利。

    2015年首个周末，全球第二大比特币交易所——位于斯洛文尼亚的Bitstamp遭到黑客袭击，丢失了价值约500万美元的比特币。科技媒体很快指出，此事令数字货币比特币2015年开局不利，财经新闻网站QUARTZ曾称比特币为“2014年最糟糕的投资”。纵观该数字货币2014年1月1日至2015年1月1日的表现，QUARTZ此言非虚：2014年底，比特币的价值仅为同年年初的39％。

    但事实上，作为一项新技术以及新运动，比特币在2014年表现出了猛烈的势头，而且在新的一年有望征服更多怀疑论者。诸多领域的指标证明了这一点：与比特币相关的初创企业和就业岗位数量大增；接受比特币的机构数量也大大增加；开发人员间的活动也较此前增强。

    首先，Bitstamp遭遇黑客袭击，以及2011年黑客袭击比特币交易平台Mt. Gox（此次黑客袭击要严重得多，其损失当时约合4亿美元），往往被误解为比特币本身存在安全问题。但事实上，这只能表明上述比特币交易平台存在缺陷，而非比特币技术本身存在问题。而最令人激动的，正是比特币背后的底层技术。正如《财富》杂志2015年1月刊《打造未来》系列报道中所写，大部分极为看好比特币、为其大声疾呼的狂热粉丝（包括马克•安德森这样的大牌企业家，也包括花大把时间更新比特币REDDIT页面的开发者和比特币“矿工”），更感兴趣的是能建立在比特币“区块”（该货币基本骨架）上的应用，而非比特币货币体系。两个实体间可通过“区块”安全交换任何形式的价值。

    比特币区块被讨论得最多的一项潜在用途，是去中心化的打车服务“Uber”。客户无需使用特定软件，就能订车并直接向司机付款，去掉中间商。（Uber创始人特拉维斯•卡兰尼克，抱歉）区块能用于各种用途，从储存安全文件（去中心化的的Dropbox）到“水印”技术，水印技术是指某块特定的比特币能包含比如你房子的房契。Digital Currency Group投资主管赖安•希尔基斯表示：“区块将催生数十年的创新。这可能催生零阻力股票发行、所有权转让以及智能合同。而上述事物共同构成了经济的支柱。如果你想创建分散管理的优步、Dropbox以及Facebook，你可以重塑互联网。”Digital Currency Group由前SecondMarket创始人巴里•希尔伯特创办。

    区块潜力巨大，以至于目前出现了创建更多“侧链”的倡议，尽管该想法存在争议。Chain是一款使创建比特币应用简便化的应用程序接口，该公司首席执行官亚当•卢德温表示：“我们目前并不想干扰主区块。主区块运作良好，我们不想破坏它。”

    目前，大部分围绕比特币的活动都是货币性的，因此，批评者指向其波动性也合乎情理。blockchain.info网站上的市场价格走势图显示，尽管以美元衡量的比特币价值在过去一年缩水了67％，其价值在过去两年则飙升了1879％。因此，投资比特币是好是坏，取决于你的视角。

    同时，大批与比特币相关的创业公司于2014年创建，表明比特币势头强劲。我们没有比特币新创企业的详尽名单，但几乎可以肯定的是，2014年成立的比特币新创企业的数量，高于此前任何年份。融资平台AngelList发给《财富》的数据证实了这一点。2011年，5家比特币初创公司在AngelList上登记。2012年，这个数字增加到13家；2013年跃升至193家；2014年更是暴增至566家。【但并非所有创业公司都会（立即）在AngelList上登记。】此外，正如巴里•希尔伯特在推特上所言，1月8日，比特币日交易总量创下历史新高。

    开发活动也处于白热化。GitHub网站上的贡献者图标显示，2014年11月，对比特币主码的贡献总量处于2012年春季以来的最高值。此外，就被“分叉”的次数而言，比特币在GitHub上90多万储存库中名列第31位，“分叉”基本是指提议或正在对核心代码进行的改动。换言之，对于开发者来说，比特币风头正劲。比特币公司目前公布的空缺职位的数量，也突显了开发者的兴趣。跟踪该趋势的Bitcoin Pulse称，如今，此类空缺职位数高达105个，接近九月137个的历史最高值。

    学者们对比特币的兴趣似乎也是前所未有的高涨。有190本关于比特币的白皮书在2014年发表，就在2013年，还只有55本。业余和专业作者们也纷纷为比特币著书立传：亚马逊列出了437本2014年出版的关于或涉及“比特币”的书籍，相比之下，2013年该数字为143本。【这是基于主题搜索的结果，因而其中包括《Bitcoin Bimbo 3:卧底警察科幻色情作品》（Bitcoin Bimbo 3: Undercover Cop Science Fiction Erotica）这种不大相干的结果】今年，体育迷们应该都注意到了首届比特币圣彼得堡碗比赛，这是北卡罗莱纳州立大学与中佛罗里达大学间的高校橄榄球季后赛。ESPN电视台迅速将BitPay以比特币形式支付的50万美元特许权费兑成了美元。

    比特币发展势头强劲的另一个指标是，接受比特币的主流企业数量增加。2014年，微软、贝宝、戴尔以及Dish Network等企业宣布，自身一系列产品接受比特币付款。此前已有塔吉特（该公司接受能以比特币购买的Gyft）、Overstock.com以及WordPress等公司接受比特币。就连《财富》出版商——时代公司，也开始接受比特币杂志订阅。去年，雅虎还将比特币加入其雅虎财经跟踪网站，令比特币更显正统。谷歌财经也很快依样画葫芦。雅虎发言人向CoinDesk网站表示：“接受比特币越来越普遍，我们觉得这与我们行业、我们用户切身相关。”假如雅虎很快更大力押宝比特币——不论是收购比特币新创企业，还是宣布其他动作——都别太惊讶，因为雅虎首席执行官玛丽莎•梅耶尔正努力使这家止步不前的搜索巨头变得更时髦。

    Charles River Ventures合伙人拉斐尔•科拉莱斯认为，学术界、基础设施以及政策等诸多领域的发展，表明2014年是迄今对比特币而言最重要的一年，尽管在此期间比特币波动很大。科拉莱斯表示：“短期而言，那些不懂或不相信比特币大有可为的人很容易攻击这一点。他们批评这一点再容易不过了。在过渡阶段，肯定会有剧烈震荡，所以只看一年的价值波动是愚蠢的。”对于偶尔出现的黑客袭击，科拉莱斯补充道：“短期内肯定会有颠簸，但问题很快就会迎刃而解。而且有一个庞大团体正致力于解决这些问题。因此，尽管存在小的颠簸，你应当对此感到兴奋不已。”

    的确，这种兴奋会导致上述团体的成员做出不切实际的声明。一些比特币开发者和投资者宣称，五年内，各大银行将接受比特币。比特币钱包Blockchain公司首席运营官彼得•史密斯承认，上述说法有些夸张。史密斯表示：“我听到很多预测称，很快全世界都将使用比特币，这些预测大都不现实。我们正试图做的，是一个相当大胆的生态系统，所以这将需要很长的时间。”

    这将需要多长时间？比特币要成为被广泛采用的货币以及新应用的协议，将在多大程度上面临主流消费者缺乏了解的障碍？亚当•卢德温表示，人们在欣赏比特币时无需理解该技术的工作原理。卢德温说：“它有些类似早期的互联网。人们实际上完全不懂其工作原理，但他们也不需要懂，他们对此也不关心。他们只知道自己打开电脑就能查看电子邮件。”

    至于说比特币进入主流银行体系？卢德温表示：“据我们估计，现在距离知名金融服务公司采用比特币，还有很长的路要走。但是用不了10年那么久。而且一旦出现萌芽，其推广的速度之快将令人震惊。”（财富中文网）

    译者：HUNTER

    审稿：李翔

    It was not an auspicious start to the new year for bitcoin investors.

    Over the first weekend of 2015 the second-largest bitcoin exchange, Slovenia-based Bitstamp, was victim of a hack to the tune of some $5 million U.S. dollars’ worth of the digital currency. As the tech press were quick to point out, it was a worrisome start to the year for a digital currency that Quartz had already declared “the worst investment of 2014.” And if you look at its performance between Jan 1, 2014 and Jan. 1, 2015, that’s not wrong: bitcoin ended the year at 39% of the value it started with.

    In reality, bitcoin displayed major momentum in the last year as both a technology and a movement, and looks poised to convert more skeptics in the year to come. The metrics in a range of areas prove it: the number of bitcoin-related startups and jobs has boomed; the number of accepting institutions has bloomed; and activity among developers is greater than ever.

    For starters, breaches like that of Bitstamp and the much larger (valued at about $400 million at the time) 2011 hack of the exchange Mt. Gox are often misconstrued as security issues with the currency itself. But they are only signs of flaws in those particular exchanges and not a sign of an issue with the underlying technology. And it is the underlying technology behind bitcoin that most excites. As we wrote in the “Shape the Future” package of our January 2015 issue, most of the vocal enthusiasts so bullish on bitcoin—from big-name entrepreneurs like Marc Andreessen to the developers and miners who spend their days refreshing the bitcoin Reddit page—are more interested in the applications that can be built on bitcoin’s “block chain,” the currency’s foundational backbone, than they are in bitcoin as a monetary system. The block chain allows the secure exchange of any form of value between two entities.

    One of the most discussed potential use cases of the block chain is as a decentralized Uber. Instead of using an app, customers could order a car and pay the driver directly, cutting out the middleman. (Sorry, Travis Kalanick.) The block chain can be utilized for everything from the storage of secure documents (that is, a decentralized Dropbox, too) to “watermarking,” in which a specific coin could contain, say, the deed to your house. “The block chain is going to spawn decades of innovation,” says Ryan Selkis, director of investments at the Digital Currency Group, created by former SecondMarket founder Barry Silbert. “It could lead to things like frictionless share issuance, title transfers, smart contracts. Collectively these things make up the backbone of the economy. If you wanted to create a decentralized Uber, Dropbox, Facebook, you could reinvent the Internet.”

    The block chain has such rich potential that there is an initiative underway to create additional “side chains,” though there is controversy around that idea. “We don’t really want to mess with the main block chain right now,” says Adam Ludwin, CEO of Chain, a block chain API that makes it easier to create bitcoin applications. “It works, we don’t want to break it.”

    For now, most of the activity around bitcoin is monetary in nature, so it makes sense that its critics point to volatility. Though the value of one bitcoin in U.S. dollars has fallen 67% in the past year, its value over the past two years is up 1,879%, according to the market price chart at blockchain.info. So whether it’s a good investment or a bad one is a matter of perspective.

    In the meantime, the sheer total of bitcoin-related startups that launched in 2014 demonstrates bitcoin’s momentum. There is no definitive listing of every single bitcoin startup, but 2014 almost certainly saw the launch of more of them than in any year prior. Data that AngelList sent to Fortune confirms that. In 2011, five bitcoin startups listed themselves on AngelList. In 2012 that number grew to 13. In 2013 it jumped to 193, and last year it exploded to 566. (But not all startups register on AngelList immediately, if at all.) In addition, on January 8 the total number of daily bitcoin transactions hit an all-time high, as Barry Silbert eagerly tweeted.

    Developer activity is also at a fever pitch. According to the contributor graph at GitHub, the total number of contributions to bitcoin’s master code in November was the highest it had been since spring 2012. Bitcoin is also the 31st “most forked repository” on GitHub—”forks” are basically proposed or in-progress alterations to core code—out of more than 900,000. In other words, for developers, bitcoin is trending. The number of open jobs currently posted at bitcoin companies also underscores developer interest: it’s at 105, which is close to the all-time high in September of 137, according to Bitcoin Pulse, which monitors such trends.

    Academics appear to be more interested in the cryptocurrency than ever before. There were 190 white papers published on bitcoin in 2014, up from 55 in 2013. Authors—amateur or otherwise—have also flocked to bitcoin: Amazon lists 437 books about or involving the term “bitcoin” published in 2014, compared to 143 in 2013. (That is based on a subject search, and thus includes less hard-hitting titles like Bitcoin Bimbo 3: Undercover Cop Science Fiction Erotica.) And sports fans this year may not have been able to ignore the inaugural Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl, a college football playoff game between North Carolina State and the University of Central Florida. ESPN quickly convertedBitPay’s $500,000 rights fee for the game into U.S. dollars.

    Another indicator of bitcoin’s momentum is the number of mainstream businesses that accept it. In 2014, Microsoft MSFT -0.84% , PayPal, Dell, and Dish Network DISH 2.24% , among many others, announced they would accept bitcoin as payment for a range of products. Those companies joined companies such as Target (which accepts Gyft, which can be purchased with bitcoin), Overstock.com, and WordPress. Even the publisher of Fortune, Time Inc. TIME -0.40% ,began accepting the cryptocurrency for magazine subscriptions. Yahoo YHOO -1.02% also added bitcoin to its Yahoo Finance tracking site last year, lending the currency additional legitimacy, and Google Finance GOOG -1.30% quickly followed suit. “Adoption of bitcoin is becoming more commonplace, and we feel it is relevant to our industry and to our users,” a Yahoo spokesperson told CoinDesk. Don’t be at all surprised if Yahoo soon goes even bigger on bitcoin—whether by acquiring a bitcoin startup or some other announcement—as part of CEO Marissa Mayer’s ongoing effort to make the stalling search giant more hip.

    Rafael Corrales, a partner at Charles River Ventures, believes that the growth in a wide range of fields—from academia to infrastructure to policy—is a sign that 2014 was the biggest year bitcoin has had yet, despite its volatility. “In the short-term, that’s an easy knock from people who don’t understand or believe it can be something,” he says. “It’s the easiest thing for them to go after. In that transition stage, you’re going to have extreme volatility, so looking at its value over one year is kind of silly.” As for occasional hacks, he adds, “There are going to be bumps in the short term, but they’ll be solved sooner than later. And these things are being addressed by a huge community of people. So you have to be really excited, despite small bumps.”

    To be sure, that excitement can certainly lead to unrealistic declarations from those in the community. Some bitcoin developers and investors proclaim that within five years, all the major banks will be accepting bitcoin. That’s a stretch, acknowledges Peter Smith, COO of the bitcoin wallet Blockchain (not to be confused with the actual bitcoin block chain). “I hear a lot of predictions about how soon the whole world will be using bitcoin, and most of the time, those are unrealistic,” he says. “What we’re trying to do as an ecosystem is incredibly audacious, so it’s going to take a lot of time.”

    How much time? And to what extent will bitcoin, in seeking wide adoption as a currency and as a protocol for new applications, face the hurdle of mainstream consumers’ lack of understanding? Adam Ludwin suggests that people don’t need to understand how the technology works to appreciate it. “It has the quality of early Internet,” he says. “People don’t actually know anything about how it works, but they don’t need to know, or care. They just know they turn their computer on and can check email.”

    As for bitcoin in the mainstream banking system? “We are still a good year away, in our estimation, from where you can imagine a known financial services company using this,” Ludwin says. “But it’s not 10 years. And when it happens, people will be surprised by how quickly it spreads.”