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Bitcoin, the decentralised, mainly digital currency that is neither issued nor guaranteed by central banks, has always seemed like a magic trick. Rather than spinning straw into gold it transforms wasted computing power into money that people will actually accept as payment.
比特币(Bitcoin)——一种既非各国央行发行、也不受其担保的分散化、（主要）数字化的货币——一直像是某种魔术手法。不同于将稻草变成黄金，比特币将多余的运算能力转换成人们将接受作为支付方式的金钱。
Radical libertarians have desperately wanted to believe in it because they hope it can resolve the following dilemma. They prefer markets to politics and they violently distrust states. But modern states in effect have a monopoly over the currencies that markets need in order to work.
激进的自由意志主义者曾迫切希望信任比特币，因为他们希望这种货币能够解决以下的两难困境。他们喜欢市场多于政治，而且对国家怀有强烈的不信任感。但现代国家实际上垄断了市场发挥作用所需要的货币。
Bitcoin, if it became broadly accepted, would challenge states’ dominance of the economy. It is designed to prevent monopoly by states or other entities, building a new currency based on shared information and making it hard for any entity to gain control. Politics disappears and a combination of technology and cryptographic proofs is conjured up in its place.
如果能被广泛接受，比特币将挑战国家对经济的主导地位。比特币从设计上防止国家或其他实体进行垄断，而是打造一种基于共享信息的新货币，使任何实体都难以获得对它的控制权。政治消失了，被一种想象出来的技术与加密检验的结合取而代之。
Unfortunately, the magic is wearing off. Some of the technological innovations associated with bitcoin will stick around. The political project will not. Rather than overcoming conventional politics, bitcoin is succumbing to it.
可惜，这种魔力正在逐渐消退。与比特币相关的一些技术创新将保留下来。其政治设想则不会。比特币非但没有克服常规政治，反而正在屈从于后者。
The biggest fights are focused on the most innovative element of bitcoin: the “blockchain”. This is a decentralised ledger of transactions using bitcoin. Bitcoin “miners” compete with one another to solve computationally hard problems. The winner receives new bitcoin but also validates a “block” of queued transactions, which is then added to the ledger and shared with the community.
最大的争执集中在比特币最具创新性的元素：“区块链”(blockchain)——一个记录比特币交易的分散化的账本。比特币“矿工们”通过互相竞争来破解计算难度极大的问题。优胜者将获得新的比特币，同时还验证一个等候交易的“区块”，后者随后被添加进账本，并与整个社区共享。
This system was designed to replace third-party regulation with decentralised authority. For technical reasons, it is starting to fail. Each block is small, meaning the system can handle only a few transactions at a time. As more people have started to use bitcoin, the system has grown more unreliable.
这一系统旨在用分散化的职权来取代第三方监管。由于技术原因，它正在开始失灵。每个区块都很小，意味着系统每次只能处理几笔交易。随着更多人开始使用比特币，系统变得越来越不可靠。
The problem is that coming up with a fix requires political agreement. Because there is no centralised authority within bitcoin, there is no one who can impose a mandate. Bitcoin’s creator, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, apparently vanished years ago, leaving big decisions to an increasingly quarrelsome community.
问题在于，形成解决方案需要达成政治协议。比特币内部没有中央权威，因此，没人可以强加授权。化名“中本聪”(Satoshi Nakamoto)的比特币发明者似乎多年前已经消失，留下一个日益争吵不休的社区来讨论重大决定。
Some influential members of the bitcoin network want to change the currency’s protocols to make the blocks bigger so that more bitcoin are released at one time, speeding up transactions. Others have responded with outrage, claiming that this would destroy bitcoin. A fundamental change to the protocol would “fork the chain”, potentially creating two different currencies with irreconcilable records, one for those who embraced the fix and another for those who refused it.
一些有影响力的比特币网络成员想修改比特币协议，让区块变得更大，以便每次可以释放出更多比特币，加快交易速度。其他人则用愤怒回应，称这样做将摧毁比特币。从根本上改变比特币协议将“形成链的分叉”，潜在创造出两种不能核账的不同货币：一种是接受修改协议的人想要的，另一种是反对修改协议的人想要的。
Others want instead to move crucial parts of transaction handling away from the block chain, relying more on “side chains”. Again, this idea is disputed: side chains could turn bitcoin’s unified approach into a stew of quasi-compatible proprietary solutions.
其他人则想将交易处理的关键部分移出区块链，更多地依靠“侧链”(side chains)。这种构想也引发争议：侧链可能把比特币的统一方法变成一堆准兼容的专有解决方案。
The leading proposal to fork the chain would require 75 per cent of the bitcoin network to agree to the proposal before it was fully implemented. However, no one is empowered to stop people from swaying opinion in illegitimate ways. Companies that favour changing the protocol, such as Coinbase, a bitcoin “wallet” and exchange business, have been targeted by distributed denial of service attacks intended to knock their servers off the internet. People on both sides have withdrawn from the bitcoin network after receiving threats.
形成链分叉的主要提议要求获得75%的比特币网络同意，才能全面实施。然而，没人拥有权力阻止人们以不正当的方式影响观点。从事比特币“钱包”及交换业务的Coinbase等支持修改协议的公司，已遭受分布式拒绝服务攻击，其目的是把他们的服务器踢出互联网。在遭到威胁后，双方都有人退出比特币网络。
This free-for-all demonstrates the main problem of technological libertarianism. It does not escape politics but temporarily displaces and conceals it. As bitcoin has become more successful, it has also become potentially more lucrative. Ideology is giving way to fights over who gets what. And it turns out that libertarians are not very good at figuring out how to resolve these political clashes.
这种混乱展现了技术自由意志主义的主要问题。它无法逃避政治，只是暂时取代并隐藏了政治。随着比特币变得越来越成功，它也变得潜在更有利可图。意识形态让位于围绕谁该得到什么的争执。事实证明，自由意志主义者并不擅长琢磨出如何解决此类政治冲突。
As these fights become more publicly visible, they will hurt bitcoin outside its core base of enthusiasts. The advocates of bitcoin got one thing absolutely right. Money is a confidence trick, a form of “frozen desire”, as the writer James Buchan describes it. We only believe in it because everyone else believes in it. So if bitcoin believers believed hard enough, and convinced other people to believe, they had a shot at making it generally accepted.
随着这些争执日益公开，他们将在核心爱好者之外损害比特币。比特币的倡导者在一个问题上完全正确。货币是某种信心诡计，正如作家詹姆斯•巴肯(James Buchan)所描述的，它是一种“被冻结的欲望”。我们相信它，只是因为所有人都相信它。因此，如果比特币的信奉者对比特币足够信任，并能说服别人也信任，他们就有机会让比特币得到公认。
That is now going to be far harder. The apparent value of bitcoin depends on a suspension of disbelief. It is hard to see how the illusion can work when the magicians are punching each other out on stage.
如今这一点已困难得多。比特币貌似具有的价值取决于人们搁置对其的怀疑。当魔术师们在舞台上相互扭打时，很难看到这种幻觉能起作用。
