比特币生态系统探秘

    对于Lite币的成功，除了自己的诚实，李还归功于另外几个要素。首先，因为Lite币采用了不同于比特币的基础代码来保护交易记录。因此，它就不用在与比特币一样的处理器上挖掘。这种差异就让挖币者能在货币争抢相对缓和的时期在比特币与Lite币之间来回运作，从而可以平抑市场波动，降低损失。采用Lite币还有一大好处，因为它比比特币略有改进——它的交易确认要比比特币快12倍，这也是它得名的由来。

    安托诺坡罗斯认为，除了有效创新和诚实的开发者以外，评估某种数字加密货币长期存活能力最重要的方式就是看它是否能被商家接受，成为购买真实商品的货币。这将是个很高的门槛——Lite币是唯一被少量商家接受的替代币，而就算比特币的拥趸，只要有新的商家接受它，都会被吹为又登上了一座分水岭。不过开发者和替代币社群目前也开始把商家接受度作为与技术同等重要的要务了：据发言人克里斯•埃利斯称，羽翼丰满的Feather币现在已组建了一个致力于开发商家关系的团队。

    而从逻辑上说，社群接受则是数字加密货币的实际用途和价值的根本推动力，因为所有货币最终都必须建立在集体信任的基础上才能流通。目前要让绝大多数人相信数字加密货币和政府印发的货币同样可信还有很大难度，但埃利斯对我说了一句我听过最简洁也最有说服力的话：“实际上，货币只是一笔分类账。它是记录社会上所有经济活动的一种手段。”

    替代币不仅仅是黑客的试验和求财的贪婪，它的爆发是受到这样一种信念的驱使，即数字加密货币代表了一种全新的、更便宜也更好的保留经济分类账的手段。数字加密币的拥趸，包括替代币的创造者在内，他们都相信数字加密货币将掀起划时代的变革，摆脱如今金融系统控制者的束缚。埃利斯说：“银行搞的是收过路费式的经济。它们的信用卡要收10%的手续费。”而在数字加密货币的流通效率下，这个成本几乎可以忽略不计。埃利斯称，Alt币表明“那些拥有足够意志力、全身心投入、花大量时间培育虚拟货币社区的人”现在已经能赚到钱了。

    这句话是否会应验还有待观察，与此同时，替代币还将迎来十分坎坷的发展历程。安托诺坡罗斯说：“它们中有99%都会在创造性毁灭的过程中灰飞烟灭。不过这样也好，因为每隔一段时间，就会有更独特、更吸引眼球的新生事物崭露头角。”（财富中文网）

    译者：清远   

    Lee credits several factors besides his own honesty with the success of litecoin. First, because litecoin uses a different base code from bitcoin to secure its transaction records, it has not been mined on the same processors as bitcoin. This separation keeps miners from switching back and forth between bitcoin and litecoin during periods of low competition for coins, reducing volatility and vulnerability. Litecoin's adoption has also been helped because it represents a small improvement over bitcoin – litecoin's transaction confirmation is 12 times faster than bitcoin's. Hence the name.

    In addition to useful innovations and honest developers, Andreas M. Antonopoulos says that the most important way to evaluate the long-term viability of a cryptocurrency is its acceptance by merchants as payment for real goods. That remains a high bar – litecoin is the only altcoin with so much as a handful of merchant adopters, and even bitcoin advocates still trumpet every new merchant acceptance as a watershed. But developers and communities are beginning to make adoption a priority alongside technology: the fledgling feathercoin, according to spokesman Chris Ellis, has an entire team devoted to merchant relations.

    Community acceptance is, logically, the fundamental driver of cryptocurrency utility and value, since all currency ultimately operates on a basis of collective trust. It remains challenging to persuade most people that cryptocurrency can be as trustworthy as a printed government guarantee, but Ellis gave me perhaps the most concise and convincing version of that pitch I've heard. "It turns out, money is just a ledger. It's a way of recording all the economic activity in a society."

    Above and beyond all the hacker experimentation and raw avarice, the altcoin explosion is driven by a belief that the cryptocurrency model represents a radically new, cheaper, and better way to keep that ledger. Cryptocoin advocates, including altcoin founders, believe that cryptocurrency will trigger an epochal power shift away from the controllers of today's financial system. "Banks are operating a tollbooth economy," said Ellis. "Banks want 10% of revenue for credit cards," a cost that cryptocurrency's distributed efficiency slashes to nearly nothing. Altcoins, Ellis said, demonstrate that "anyone with sufficient will and devotion and time to nurture the community" can now build their own money.

    That remains to be seen, and in the meantime, altcoins are in for a very bumpy ride. "99% of them will expire in the process of creative destruction," says Antonopoulos. "And that's fine, because every once in a while, something unique and amazing will pop out."